The Linux Foundation has announced that Tencent has become the latest member to obtain platinum membership.
The non-profit American tech company, which is funded by membership payments, uses the funding for sustainable open source projects.
Within the foundation, there are three membership tiers, starting from silver to gold, all the way up to platinum where members have to pay $500,000 a year (approx. £377,643) for that category.
To qualify as a Platinum Member, the individual or entity “must engage in or support the production, manufacture, use or sale or standardisation of Linux or other open source-based technologies”, according to The Linux Foundation bylaws.
Companies in the platinum member bracket include VMWare, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, IBM and Qualcomm to name but a few.
Who is Tencent?
You may not have seen much of Tencent in the UK, although times are changing quickly.
The company was founded on the 11 November 1998 in Shenzhen, China, specialising in internet services, AI and technology globally. Now a global technology behemoth, it owns a wealth of companies, including WeBank, and video game developers Epic Games, Riot Games, and Supercell.
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Recently, the company released their Q1 results for 2018 where their total revenues were 73.5 million RMB (approx. £8.5 billion GBP).
With Tencent obtaining their platinum membership, it means that General Manager of the Mobile Internet Group, Liu Xin joins The Linux Foundation Board of Directors.
What’s the Plan?
The level of membership means that the company is able to take full advantage of the foundation’s areas of expertise, including open source governance, legal and compliance, events and marketing, and so much more.
Tencent’s Liu said: “We look forward to strengthening our relationship with the international open source community and promoting innovation in cutting edge technology.
“As a first step, we are contributing our open source microservices project TARS, and open source name service project Tseer, to The Linux Foundation.”
Jim Zemlin, Executive Director for The Linux Foundation was delighted to be further collaborating with Tencent.
Zemlin added: “As Tencent’s contributions to open source continue to accelerate, The Linux Foundation is thrilled to work more closely with the company to provide more resources and support to the community.
“We look forward to collaborating with Tencent to enable more innovation and development to spur the creation of new and exciting technologies in the days ahead.”
