In the wake of the Heartbleed OpenSSL crisis, The Linux Foundation formed a multi-million dollar project to fund and support critical elements of the global information infrastructure. Founding backers of the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, VMware, and The Linux Foundation, who were joined by additional founding members Adobe, Bloomberg, HP, Huawei, and salesforce.com.
“All software development requires support and funding. Open source software is no exception and warrants a level of support on par with the dominant role it plays supporting today’s global information infrastructure,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation. “CII implements the same collaborative approach that is used to build software to help fund the most critical projects.”
The CII Steering Committee has prioritized Network Time Protocol, OpenSSH and OpenSSL for the first round of funding. OpenSSL will receive funds from CII for two, full-time core developers. The Open Crypto Audit Project (OCAP) will also receive funding in order to conduct a security audit of the OpenSSL code base.
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