In an early morning announcement, LinuxCon kicked off with an introduction from Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the The Linux Foundation, to the newest member of the Linux Foundation Board, Rob Chandhok of Qualcomm. Qualcomm joins companies like IBM, Intel, NEC and Oracle as a platinum level sponsor of the foundation.
The announcement comes at a time when the Linux Foundation begins its new initiative for open source licensing compliance. With handset development and mobile apps taking advantage of open source technology at an increasing rate, the complex layer of the mobile industry supply chain finds itself in a struggle to keep up with upstream and downstream license compliance. The partnership with Qualcomm and The Linux Foundation positions Chandhok to become an industry leader in the transition from the wild west of do-it-yourself licensing practices to a more widely implemented and accepted system of standards and practices.
Qualcomm’s decision to partner with the Linux Foundation was described as a statement of recognition on behalf of their organization to the open source community that the emergence of this technology has reached a point of maturity and is rapidly becoming the industry standard. Its partnership takes it beyond its previous development efforts, mostly comprised of C++ libraries and cryptography, and opens the door for more standardized open source mobile platforms and applications. Qualcomm’s “lead from the front” philosophy has continued to distance itself from the industry pack who are, for the most part, still playing catch-up in a market now exploding with recent developments like the Android operating system. Their efforts to not only embrace the open source community, but become an integral part of its future makes it stand out as rare example of a corporation that is contributing as much as they are benefiting from its implementation as a cornerstone for their product development.