The Open Source Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and protecting open source software, recently announced that Microsoft has become its Premium Sponsor.
The main goal of OSI is to promote open source technologies and software projects through education and collaboration. It should be emphasized that without organizations like OSI, the Open Source movement would have no chance of success. Now, with Microsoft's participation in the movement, the effort will be promoted even further.
Patrick Masson, OSI Director General, said that Microsoft's participation is a significant milestone for the movement since there could be no greater proof of the movement's maturity than its recognition and grant by the giant.
According to OSI, Microsoft is the leading contributor to Open Source software projects hosted on the popular GitHub platform. The platform's partnerships with the Open Source community are well-known, including partnerships with Canonical on a custom Ubuntu kernel for Azure, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and Bash for Ubuntu on Windows.
Microsoft is also known to have collaborated with Red Hat and SUSE on various projects as well as with the Linux Foundation and the FreeBSD Foundation which are members of the Open Source Initiative affiliates.
Finally, Microsoft, taking its collaboration with Open Source one step further, intends to integrate more open source software into its products.
