TODO Group, New Linux Foundation Project, Spurs Open Source Adoption

The open source ecosystem gained another major partner collaboration this week with the announcement that the TODO Group has become a Linux Foundation project, increasing the investment of a number of major companies in open source.

The TODO Group launched in November 2014 with the goal of supporting the adoption of open source software by corporations. The organization’s goal is to address a “gap” between open source capabilities on the one hand, and knowledge about open source software on the other.

Box, Dropbox, Facebook, GitHub, Google, HPE, Khan Academy, Microsoft, Square, Stripe, Twitter, Walmart Labs and Yahoo! were members of the TODO Group in its first iteration. Now, Autodesk, CapitalOne, Netflix and SanDisk have signed on as well as the organizations transitions to becoming a Linux Foundation project.

“From carmakers and banks to retailers and hospitals, every industry relies on open source software, and  every company is an Internet company,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “The TODO Group reaches across industries to collaborate with open source technical and business leaders to share best practices, tools and programs for building dependable, effective projects for the long term.”

At this point, organizations like the TODO Group are no longer novel. Nor is another effort by the Linux Foundation to encourage the adoption of open source software and open standards in the industry. A number of other Linux Foundation projects work toward similar goals, from OPNFV to the Open API Initiative.

Yet this week’s TODO Group news is significant nonetheless because virtually none of the organization’s members have an obvious stake in the success of Linux. Apart from GitHub — and arguably, maybe, Google and Facebook — the existing members do not depend in a central way on open source for making money. The fact that they are nonetheless now collaborating with the Linux Foundation is notable for that reason.