Unboxing the AI Stack
Organization · L01 · Agents

Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a US non-profit, organized as a 501(c)(6), that hosts open source software, hardware and standards projects and gives them neutral governance, legal, event and infrastructure support.1 It was formed by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, announced on January 22, 2007, with Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell and Oracle as founding platinum members and Jim Zemlin, the Free Standards Group’s executive director, at its head;2 the two groups’ members voted for the merger, according to an ISO/IEC standards liaison note.3 Zemlin is still its executive director.6 It stewards the Linux kernel, Kubernetes, Node.js and PyTorch, among other projects, as Anthropic’s announcement of its donation to the foundation lists them.8

In its 2025 annual report the foundation says 2,126 members supported it, 21,624 organizations contributed to its projects and 100,182 developers were actively contributing.4 The same report says three of the four parts of what it calls the “PARK stack” for AI (PyTorch, AI models, Ray and Kubernetes) are now Linux Foundation projects.4

It is also the neutral home of the main agent protocols covered on MetaPrompt. It took in Google’s Agent2Agent Protocol as a project on June 23, 2025.5 On December 9, 2025 it formed the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund that took Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, Block’s goose and OpenAI’s AGENTS.md as its founding projects,68 and A2A moved into the Agentic AI Foundation as a hosted project on August 17, 2026.7 Its role in the agent stack is covered in How the Model Context Protocol Works and the agent identity and trust standards tracker.

Illustration: the Linux Foundation sits in the agents layer of the stack, as the home of the main agent protocols.

Key facts

TypeNon-profit, 501(c)(6)1
FormedMerger of OSDL and the Free Standards Group, announced January 22, 20072
Executive directorJim Zemlin26
Members supporting it (2025)2,126 Vendor-stated4
Organizations contributing to its projects (2025)21,624 Vendor-stated4
Developers actively contributing (2025)100,182 Vendor-stated4
Agent projectsAgent2Agent (from June 23, 2025; in the AAIF since August 17, 2026); Agentic AI Foundation (from December 9, 2025)567

As of . Member, organization and developer counts are the foundation’s own figures for 2025. How figures are labeled.

Appears in

Sources

  1. Linux Foundation, About the Linux Foundation, retrieved 2026-10-19.
  2. Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group, “New Linux Foundation Launches – Merger of Open Source Development Labs and Free Standards Group” (press release, January 22, 2007), as reprinted by PC Perspective, retrieved 2026-10-19.
  3. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG14, N1230 (liaison note on the merger of the Free Standards Group and OSDL), retrieved 2026-10-19.
  4. Linux Foundation, 2025 Linux Foundation Annual Report, “Innovation in the Open” (PDF), retrieved 2026-10-19.
  5. Linux Foundation, “Linux Foundation Launches the Agent2Agent Protocol Project to Enable Secure, Intelligent Communication Between AI Agents” (June 23, 2025), retrieved 2026-10-19.
  6. Linux Foundation, “Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), Anchored by New Project Contributions Including Model Context Protocol (MCP), goose and AGENTS.md” (December 9, 2025), retrieved 2026-10-19.
  7. Agentic AI Foundation, “A2A joins AAIF” (August 17, 2026), retrieved 2026-10-19.
  8. Anthropic, “Donating the Model Context Protocol and establishing the Agentic AI Foundation” (December 9, 2025), retrieved 2026-10-19.