Chinese internet giant Tencent becomes a paying member of Linux Foundation

The Chinese internet giant Tencent, owner of the QQ messenger and WeChat, among others, has become a paying member of the Linux Foundation. The company is a ‘platinum’ member and thus joins companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Samsung and Huawei.

Tencent writes that one of his top men will be given a place on the board of the Linux Foundation. As a paying platinum member, Tencent contributes half a million dollars annually to the organization, which it says is committed to “the creation of sustainable open source ecosystems.” Earlier this year, the organization opened a deep learning department, in which Tencent was one of the founders along with other companies. The Chinese company also announces that it is now contributing to the organization’s so-called Angel-ai project.

The Linux Foundation reports that the projects TSeer and Tars, which Tencent made open source just over a year ago, will be added. The last project concerns an RPC framework that Tencent has been using since 2008.

The Linux Foundation claims to count about eight hundred organizations among its members. There are a handful of platinum members, with Tencent growing to fourteen. Microsoft joined this category at the end of 2016. The company recently announced its acquisition of GitHub. The Linux Foundation called this good news earlier this month.