The Linux Foundation on Tuesday announced receiving $12.5 million in grant funding from major tech companies to advance open source security.
The funds came from Anthropic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), GitHub, Google, Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and OpenAI, and will be managed by the foundation’s security initiatives Alpha-Omega and Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).
According to the Linux Foundation, the funding will support the development of long-term security solutions for the entire open source ecosystem.
The grants, it says, came at a time when AI is fueling an uptick in the speed and scale of vulnerability discovery in open source.
The increasingly complex security landscape, it says, results in maintainers being flooded by security findings without the resources to effectively triage and address them.
Using the fresh funding, Alpha-Omega and OpenSSF will collaborate with maintainers and with open source communities worldwide to provide them with accessible and practical emerging security capabilities that align with existing project workflows.
The funds will be invested in sustainable strategies to help maintainers with the management of growing security demands and to improve the resilience of the open source ecosystem.
“Open source software is a critical part of the modern technology landscape. As AI accelerates both software development and the discovery of vulnerabilities, the industry must step up to protect this shared infrastructure. This collaboration represents an important step in democratizing AI-powered defenses,” said Microsoft Azure CTO and Deputy CISO Mark Russinovich.
“By directly empowering the maintainers, we have an extraordinary opportunity to ensure that those at the front lines of software security have the tools and standards to take preventative measures to stay ahead of issues and build a more resilient ecosystem for everyone,” OpenSSF GM Steve Fernandez said.
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