In a significant development for the open source community, the Open Infrastructure (OpenInfra) Foundation is merging with the Linux Foundation. This strategic alliance aims to enhance collaboration and address the evolving needs of modern infrastructure deployment, particularly in the age of AI.

A Strategic Partnership for the Future

The OpenInfra Foundation will operate as a top level independent foundation within the Linux Foundation ecosystem, similar to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) or the PyTorch Foundation. According to Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenInfra Foundation, this consolidation is driven by the changing landscape of open source software development and deployment.

“Things have changed. The world has changed. Our foundations have changed. So it makes a lot of sense right now,” Bryce explained when asked about the timing of this merger.

Responding to Increased Regulation and Scrutiny

One of the key drivers behind this merger is the increased regulation and scrutiny that open source software now faces. As open source has become critical to numerous products and systems, governments and large organizations require greater transparency and trust in how these projects are built, secured, and released.

Bryce specifically mentioned the Cyber Resiliency Act (CRA) coming out of the EU as an example of this increased regulatory pressure. The merger will allow the OpenInfra Foundation to leverage the Linux Foundation’s existing capabilities around policy and legal support, rather than duplicating efforts.

The Open Infra Blueprint: Linux, OpenStack, and Kubernetes

A core focus of the OpenInfra Foundation has been what they call the “OpenInfra Blueprint,” formerly termed “LOKI” (Linux, OpenStack, and Kubernetes Infrastructure). This blueprint represents a common pattern observed across users:

• Linux as the robust operating system for managing devices
• OpenStack as the operating system for managing collections of servers
• Kubernetes for managing application resources and deployments

According to Bryce, approximately 80% of OpenStack clouds run Kubernetes, and around 90% run Ceph (another Linux Foundation-supported project). This high level of integration makes the merger a natural step toward better collaboration.

Infrastructure’s Critical Role in AI Development

Despite the merger, infrastructure remains more important than ever before, especially with the growing focus on AI. Bryce emphasized that infrastructure is the foundation enabling AI model development:

“You can’t separate infrastructure from AI,” Bryce stated. “When I look at that, what I get excited about is, how did they get to that point? And the answer is, infrastructure.”

The infrastructure layer provides the massive compute resources, enormous datasets, and network capacity required for training today’s AI models. The OpenInfra Foundation’s 31st release, codenamed “Epoxy,” includes features improving network performance, bare metal provisioning, and support for higher performance from the latest GPUs – all critical for AI workloads.

Community-Centric Approach

A significant consideration in this merger was preserving the unique culture and community of the OpenInfra Foundation. Bryce highlighted that the Linux Foundation has demonstrated its ability to support diverse communities while allowing them to maintain their identity:

“One of the things that helped our community feel really good about this transition is the fact that so many communities have thrived within the Linux Foundation. That’s a sign they know how not to mandate a specific kind of monoculture onto communities and projects, but instead how to give them room to grow, thrive, and develop their own identity.”

The Linux Foundation’s strong programs for supporting underrepresented groups and mentoring new talent were cited as additional benefits of the merger.

Future Roadmap: Real-World Needs

The OpenInfra Foundation’s roadmap will continue to focus on compute, storage, and networking infrastructure, targeting the needs of those responsible for data centers. Unlike earlier days with more experimental projects, current development is grounded in real-world requirements from production environments.

Particularly with AI adoption, organizations need infrastructure that can manage fleets of GPUs, divide them into tenants, share portions of resources, and maximize the usage of expensive hardware. The OpenInfra Foundation’s development community continues to advance capabilities at the compute, storage, and networking layers to meet these challenges.

Simplifying Complexity

The OpenInfra Foundation has made significant progress in simplifying deployment and management. Bryce mentioned that OpenStack has become “dramatically easier to install and upgrade and operate,” with some organizations running two data centers per engineer. A new release model allows users to skip releases, reducing the frequency of required upgrades.

Other projects like StarlingX offer more concise form factors for edge computing, providing containers and virtual machines with many decisions already made, reducing complexity for users.

Conclusion

The merger between the OpenInfra Foundation and the Linux Foundation represents a strategic move to enhance collaboration, share resources, and address the increasing demands placed on open source infrastructure projects. By combining forces, these foundations aim to better support the evolving needs of infrastructure deployment, particularly in high-demand areas like AI, while maintaining the unique communities they’ve built.

As Jonathan Bryce summarized, this merger is about “not disrupting the good work of the community and our ecosystem, companies, and our users,” while finding ways to “collaborate more closely” and “break down barriers” between open source communities.

For organizations looking to deploy AI workloads and seeking guidance on which community to engage with, Bryce recommends evaluating based on specific needs: data center responsibility (OpenInfra), application platforms (CNCF), or operator networks (LF Networking).

Guest: Jonathan Bryce
Organization: OpenInfra Foundation
Show: KubeStruck