Ubuntu sponsor joins Linux Foundation

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has joined the Linux Foundation, the foundation said Monday.

Canonical is an important new member, the organization said. "They have rallied the cause of cross-industry, cross-community collaboration for years," said Jim Zemlin, foundation executive director, in a statement released by the foundation.

Canonical also supports open source projects such as Bazaar, for revision control; the Storm object-relational mapper, and the Upstart start-up manager.

"The Linux Foundation occupies a critical, non-commercial function in the use and popularization of Linux around the world. We've always seen the Linux Foundation's value and are pleased to now become an official member and support its activities. We look forward to working with them to continue the march of Linux in all areas of computing," said Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu program manager and CTO at Canonical, also in a statement supplied by the foundation.

The Linux Foundation serves as a nonprofit consortium fostering the growth of Linux. It sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.