The Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes open-source technology, has announced the launch of its new entity in India. The organization aims to encourage contributions to open-source projects across India’s ecosystem of businesses, startups, and government.
India already boasts 13.2 million developers using GitHub for their projects, making it the second-largest market for open-source developers after the U.S. The country is projected to surpass the U.S. by 2028. However, the Indian developer community’s contributions to open-source projects hosted by the Linux Foundation are relatively limited, with only around 200,000 developers currently participating.
To address this, the nonprofit has created LF India to increase contributions and support the growth of open-source technology in India. Arpit Joshipura, general manager and SVP of the Linux Foundation, and head of LF India, expressed the importance of establishing LF India for local collaborations to make a global impact.
LF India will collaborate with local developers, businesses, startups, and government organizations in India to nurture and back open-source software projects. The country has a history of adopting open-source software, with local communities advocating for its adoption. The Indian government itself embraces open-source technologies to reduce costs and decrease reliance on proprietary solutions.
The Indian entity aims to facilitate training, education, and proof of concepts for enterprises, developers, and the government to not only consume but also contribute to open-source projects. LF India will work with local partners like OpenNets and the International Startup Foundation to offer training and support for open-source implementations.
In addition to Europe and Japan, where the Linux Foundation already has established entities, LF India will focus on segments like cloud-native, telecommunications, edge/IoT, blockchain, security, and domain-specific AI technologies. It will also help expand tech collaborations between the U.S. and India, drive standardization of open source tech for critical infrastructure, including telecom, and promote upstream contributions to global projects.
Events hosted by LF India aim to bring the Indian open-source community together, fostering networking among contributors and developers. The organization is currently hosting KubeCon in Delhi and plans to hold more events like these to strengthen the open-source community in India. Additionally, LF India will work to grow the Linux Foundation’s membership in the country, with key members like Infosys and Reliance Jio already onboard.
Through collaborative efforts with organizations like the Linux Foundation and LF India, the aim is to harness open-source innovation to build a more secure 6G ecosystem. LF India’s establishment is a significant step in expanding global awareness of open-source technology, as noted by Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation.
