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New AI & Data Foundation Combines Industry’s Fastest-Growing Open Source Developments in Artificial Intelligence and Open Data
San Francisco, Calif., October 26, 2020 – LF AI Foundation (LF AI), the organization building an ecosystem to enable and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL), and ODPi, a nonprofit organization accelerating the open ecosystem of big data solutions, today announced they will come together under the new LF AI & Data Foundation. The LF AI & Data The Linux Foundation’s AI Foundation & ODPi merge to support growing portfolio of technologies and drive open source collaboration across AI and data
Foundation will build and support an open community and a growing ecosystem of open source AI, data and analytics projects, by accelerating development and innovation, enabling collaboration and the creation of new opportunities for all the members of the community.
As one entity under the Linux Foundation, this consolidated and focused effort will enable additional collaboration and integration in the space of AI/ML/DL and Data. With the creation of LF AI & Data, both communities will now support a growing ecosystem of artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and data technologies. AI and Data are inseparable and codependent on each other. Combining efforts in both spaces will bring developers and projects under a single roof, orchestrated by a single Technical Advisory Council and several committees (Trusted AI, BI & AI), to work together towards building the open source AI & Data ecosystem and accelerating development and innovation. Hosting projects under a single umbrella enables closer collaboration, integration, and interoperability across projects and is a proven recipe for building strong open ecosystems. At the same time, it will provide a unified guidance for end users on tools, interoperability, integration, standards, and the future of AI, Data and Analytics as its use continues to grow in every industry. Furthermore, as member driven organizations, joining forces under LF AI & Data will allow greater efficiency for members across the various services we offer to our hosted projects.
“LF AI has been growing at the rate of one new project per month, including several data projects. It is a natural move to bring together the open AI and data communities to enable better interoperability and capabilities across all of our hosted projects and to enable closer collaboration, which has been a proven recipe for building a strong open ecosystem. It will also provide our members greater cost efficiency when supporting our projects,” said Dr. Ibrahim Haddad, LF AI Executive Director. “We look forward to supporting innovation in the open source ecosystem focused on AI, Data and Analytics.”
“Over the past 5 years, ODPi has been a part of driving standardization and consolidation in the Big Data and Hadoop ecosystem, as well as becoming a focal point for the data challenges of the enterprises of today such as metadata, governance, and data science,” said John Mertic, Director, ODPi. “Coming together to form LF AI & Data is the next natural step in this mission, enabling greater interoperability to drive both innovation and sustainable growth for key projects.”
ODPi and its projects Egeria and OpenDS4All will become hosted projects under the LF AI & Data Foundation, with BI and AI becoming a committee within the foundation. They will maintain their current open technical governance model, establish collaboration with other hosted projects in LF AI & Data via the efforts of the its Technical Advisory Council, and benefit from a host of services offered to facilitate collaboration and increased adoption.
Charles “Starlord” Xie, Chairperson, LF AI Governing Board, said: “Today’s announcement of LF AI & Data is very exciting news for the open source AI ecosystem. LF AI & Data brings together companies, projects and communities focusing on AI and Data under a single organization to foster collaboration and integration across projects. We look forward to the months and years to come as we anticipate significant growth in our project portfolio and the development of many collaboration opportunities.”
Craig Rubendall, Chairperson, ODPi, said: “The ODPi Board of Directors and technical community are excited to come together with LF AI to form LF AI & Data. This joint foundation will enable the key open source projects our industry depends on to have a sustainable home, which will drive further innovation and collaboration.”
Jim Spohrer, Director, IBM Center for Open Source Data and AI Technologies and LF AI Technical Advisory Council Chairperson, said: “If you are committed to advancing open source AI and data as an industry-standard infrastructure and democratizing access to AI, there is a great opportunity to contribute within the community. Join our bi-weekly TAC meetings and connect with us on the LFAI slack channel.”
LF AI launched two years ago with nine founding members and one hosted project, and today has 25 members and 20 technical projects. ODPi launched five years ago, and is supported by a strong roster of industry-leading members. Together, under the LF AI & Data Foundation, there are 22 projects supported by more than 60 companies, 20 universities and more than 1,300 active developers contributing to these projects.
New members of LF AI & Data Foundation include aivancity School for Technology, Business & Society, AlphaBravo, Cloudera, Databricks, Index Analytics, ING Bank, OpenI, Precisely, Peng Cheng Laboratory, SAS Institute, and the Shanghai OpenSource Information Technology Association.
“The future of open source is directly linked to the AI ecosystem and a multitude of data communities. Therefore, it is a natural pairing for LF AI and ODPi to join forces and Cloudera is thrilled to be aiding their efforts in growing the project portfolio to encourage innovation and enable stronger interoperability and collaboration.” – Arun Murthy, CPO, Cloudera.
“Both fresh ingredients and a wonderful recipe are important for a delicious meal. Index Analytics is happy to join this feast as AI (Recipe) and Data (Ingredients) converge!” – Cupid Chan, CTO, Index Analytics
“Precisely is proud to be a member of the Linux Foundation AI & Data to help accelerate the growth and adoption of artificial Intelligence (AI). At Precisely we are committed to delivering the trusted data that is required to enable trusted AI and analytics. We believe that providing data integrity – data with accuracy, consistency, and context – help enable organizations to accelerate their adoption of AI and drive better business decisions.” – Tendü Yoğurtçu, PhD, Chief Technology Officer, Precisely
For more information and to get involved please visit: https://lfai.foundation/about/join/. If you’re interested in hosting a project, please review the Proposal and Hosting Process and check out the Hosting Requirements. For questions, please email info@lfaidata.foundation.
Helpful Resources
- LF AI & Data website
- Learn about membership opportunities
- Explore the interactive landscape
- Check out our technical projects
- Join us at upcoming events
- Read the latest announcements on the blog
- Subscribe to the mailing lists
- Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn
- Access other resources on LF AI & Data’s GitHub or Wiki
About LF AI & Data Foundation
The LF AI & Data Foundation, a Linux Foundation project, accelerates and sustains the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Management, Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL) and Data open source projects. Backed by many of the world’s largest technology leaders, LF AI & Data is a neutral space for harmonization and ecosystem engagement to advance AI and Data innovation. To get involved with the LF AI & Data Foundation, please visit https://lfaidata.foundation.
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Linux Foundation Focuses on Science and Research to Advance Diversity and Inclusion in Software Engineering
Open Source Summit Europe, October 26, 2020 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the Software Developer Diversity and Inclusion (SDDI) project. SDDI will explore, evaluate, and promote best practices from research and industry to increase diversity and inclusion in software engineering. Founding contributors include Comcast, Facebook, GitHub, Intel and VMware and research professors from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Eindhoven University of Technology, Oregon State University, University of Auckland and University of Victoria.
According to StackOverflow’s 2020 survey of more than 65,000 developers, 91.7 percent identify as male and 70.7 percent as white or of European descent. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done to create inclusive environments that can lead to a more diverse community building the software that is the foundation for our digital society. Research indicates that racially diverse groups make better decisions, diverse open source projects are more productive and that working on gender diverse teams improves attitudes towards women.
“While there are a variety of important diversity and inclusion initiatives in the technology industry, none are focused on increasing diversity across categories – race, gender, age and cognitive ability – in software engineering and informed by science and research,” said Kate Stewart, senior director of strategic programs at Linux Foundation. “We have optimism about the future of the open source community and our collective ability to increase diversity and inclusion. The work we do today can influence the vibrancy of the community and effectiveness of our technologies tomorrow.”
SDDI will include a steering committee and working groups that explore, evaluate and promote best practices from research and industry to increase diversity and inclusion in software engineering. The steering committee will be responsible for prioritizing the initial working groups, which could address research methods, ethics, resources and data, as well as diversity in the areas of gender, age, cognitive ability and education.
Open source projects are encouraged to participate in SDDI to inform best practices and to benefit from the findings of the Project. Existing Linux Foundation projects – TODO, which focuses on open source program office best practices, and the CHAOSS Project, which identifies tooling and metrics for diversity and inclusion – will also work closely with the new SDDI Project.
Supporting Comments
“The Software Developer Diversity and Inclusion Project (SDDI) is an excellent initiative that complements the work of the CHAOSS Project. Through collaboration, we can accelerate progress towards building a better virtual workplace for all developers,” said Nicole Huesman, Governing Board Co-Chair, the CHAOSS Project. “We’re looking forward to the research and best practices that surface from this work, so we can implement it in our work on metrics and tooling.”
“Diversity and inclusion are the cornerstone of building long term sustainable open source communities and programs,” said Chris Aniszczyk, co-founder of the TODO Group and CTO, CNCF. “The TODO Group looks forward to collaborating with the SDDI to share lessons and best practices from corporate open source programs.”
“Inclusive Open Source is of vital importance to industry and academia. The Software Developer Diversity and Inclusion (SDDI) project is a great initiative to bring inclusivity to OSS projects and products. For example, gender biases are embedded in the very tools that OSS projects use and the way information is structured. I look forward to working with SDDI to bring down these barriers, one feature at a time,” said Dr. Anita Sarma, Associate Professor, Computer Science, School of EECS, Oregon State University.
“Software systems are responsible for all aspects of modern life. They help humans make critical short-term and long-term societal and personal decisions, and yet the diversity and values of the people designing software systems do not remotely represent the diversity and values of people on our planet. The SDDI initiative, an active collaboration between industry and academia, will drive essential and rigorous research towards understanding barriers to diversity and inclusion while also discovering and promoting best practices,” said Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria, Canada.
“Despite significant efforts over recent years to increase diversity and inclusion in many software companies, little traction has been made. This signals that new ways of thinking are needed to better understand the barriers and best practices. This initiative can help to stimulate new understanding and develop improved diversity and inclusion practices, which will lead to more innovative and useful software products,” said Kelly Blincoe, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
“Diversity is essential not only to create products that address needs of diverse groups of users but also to create sustainable and vibrant development teams. SDDI has the power and the promise to combine best industrial practices, insights from open source software developments and findings of the academic research to bring change in the ways teams are are organised and work together, and ultimately both in more comfortable and sustainable working environment, and better software products,” said Alexander Serebrenik, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.
“Diversity and inclusion in software development have broad impact beyond our industry, particularly for those who are living in low and medium HDI countries. For them, being included in the software development profession is often a life-changing opportunity. I believe SDDI, a strong collaboration between academia and industry, would benefit the disadvantaged groups around the world,” said Yi Wang, Professor, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
“Diversity of thought is a vital component for building sustainable and healthy open source communities. Individuals from diverse backgrounds injecting new and innovative ideas advances an inclusive and welcoming ecosystem for all. SDDI with its focus on best practices in increasing D&I will be instrumental in providing the right direction for all committed to increasing diversity,” said Shuah Khan, Kernel Maintainer & Fellow, the Linux Foundation.
“Without an intentional and coordinated effort like the SDDI, it will be hard to move the needle on more diversity in software engineering. There are many great practices across open source, companies and universities that we need to aggregate, make easier to discover and put into action. The Linux Foundation is at the center of all of these communities and can get us together to improve the state of diversity in tech,” said Nithya Ruff, Head of Comcast Open Source Program Office, Chair, Linux Foundation Board.
“At Intel, we believe diverse and inclusive teams are more creative and innovative. We continue to raise the bar in areas such as representation, pay equity, and inclusion initiatives. This year, we announced our 2030 goals, global challenges and RISE strategy to create a more responsible, inclusive, and sustainable world, enabled through technology and our collective actions. We welcome the Linux Foundation’s new SDDI initiative to focus on improving inclusion and representation in the Open Source community and look forward to furthering this effort,” said Melissa Evers-Hood, Vice President, General Manager of Software Business Strategy, Intel Architecture, Graphics and Software, Intel Corporation
“Open source lifts all boats — creating innovation and opportunity for developers around the world. For Facebook, investing in open source is a way to empower developers as well as broader communities of individuals and businesses. To that end, we’re thrilled to support Linux Foundation’s SDDI effort which will not only help us invest in the next generation of open source developers but also promote increasing diversity in tech,” said Kathy Kam, Head of Open Source, Facebook.
“As home to most of the world’s open source software, GitHub believes deeply in the potential of a passionate, diverse open source community to move our world forward and accelerate human progress. GitHub is thrilled to collaborate on this project, which will allow us to “open source diversity and inclusion” for the benefit of us all. By making software development more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable, we can support the growth of a community where all developers — no matter who or where they are in the world — can learn, contribute, grow, and feel like they belong,” said Demetris Cheatham, Senior Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, GitHub.
“Innovation is a core tenet of VMware. We know that to make faster progress around Diversity and Inclusion we need to apply innovation and research the same way we do to technology problems. Supporting initiatives like this aligns with our values and is critical to the long term success of the technology industry as a whole,” said Shanis Windland, vice president, Diversity and Inclusion, VMware.
“SDDI will be an important initiative,” said Daniel Izquierdo, cofounder of Bitergia. “We at Bitergia do D&I research for customers and we look forward to sharing our experience and learning from others through SDDI.”
For more information about SDDI and to contribute, please visit: https://sddiproject.org/
About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,500 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
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[1] Sommers, Samuel R. “On racial diversity and group decision making: identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations.” Journal of personality and social psychology 90.4 (2006): 597. Vasilescu, Bogdan, et al. “Gender and tenure diversity in GitHub teams.” Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems. 2015. Wang, Oliver and Zhang, Min. “Reducing Implicit Gender Biases in Software Development: Does Intergroup Contact Theory Work?” Proceedings of Foundations of Software Engineering. 2020.
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