Open Infrastructure Foundation

The former OpenStack Foundation, home to OpenStack, Kata Containers, StarlingX and Zuul, and a directed fund of the Linux Foundation since June 2025.

2 projects in this catalogPart of the Linux Foundation 2 confirmed Website

What it is

The Open Infrastructure Foundation (OpenInfra) began as the OpenStack Foundation, which launched on September 19, 2012 to take over OpenStack from Rackspace, the company that had started the project with NASA in 2010 and handed the foundation its trademark. From December 2017 it took on projects other than OpenStack, starting with Kata Containers, and in October 2020 it changed its name to match. On March 12, 2025 its board announced, with unanimous approval from both boards, that it would join the Linux Foundation; the deal closed on June 1, 2025, and all of its staff moved to the LF. It is now a directed fund of the Linux Foundation, and in October 2026 it hosted four projects, all of them confirmed: OpenStack, Kata Containers, StarlingX and Zuul. Its website counts more than 110,000 community members.

For someone choosing a technology, the OpenInfra badge says the name is held for the project rather than by one vendor: the foundation’s charter requires every project trademark to be transferred to LF Projects, LLC or the Linux Foundation. It also says the project follows the “Four Opens”, open source, open design, open development and open community, which the foundation’s guidelines ask of every project, with code under an open-source licence the board has approved. Most projects use Apache 2.0, but the board approved Zuul’s use of GPLv3 when it confirmed the project.

It does not say how a project is run day to day. The charter leaves each project’s governance to its own charter, so OpenStack, for example, has its own elected Technical Committee and release process, and the foundation’s board deals with money, members, events and the project lifecycle. Confirmation is not a permanent seal either: OpenInfra Labs was archived as a pilot in January 2024, and Airship, confirmed in October 2019, is no longer among the four projects the foundation lists, although its own website still calls it an OpenInfra Foundation project.

Its projects in this catalog

Confirmed2

A project the board has voted to confirm as an Open Infrastructure Project, after reviewing its strategic fit, governance, technical practices, openness and the breadth of its community.

Kata ContainersOpen sourceA pilot project until the board confirmed it on April 8, 2019A container runtime that starts each pod inside its own lightweight VM, so Kubernetes and Docker keep working but every pod gets its own kernel.

OpenStackOpen sourceOpen-source software for running your own infrastructure-as-a-service cloud: a set of services with REST APIs that hand out virtual machines, networks, disks and images on your own hardware, released every six months.

In depth

Pilot and confirmed projects#

The board’s project guidelines were written in 2019, when the foundation was still the OpenStack Foundation; the 2025 charter gives the Governing Board the job of setting “the processes to guide the lifecycles” of projects. In October 2026 the projects page listed four confirmed projects and no pilots.

Pilot

none in October 2026

Foundation staff support a pilot project while it builds the governance and community the board will look for. Kata Containers became the first pilot in December 2017, under a “container infrastructure” strategic focus area; StarlingX and Zuul followed in May 2018. OpenInfra Labs, a pilot launched about four years earlier as a home for work in areas such as AI and telemetry, was archived in January 2024 after its remaining members wound it down; the foundation closed its mailing list but kept the archives and other material online.

Confirmed

4 projects

A pilot applies to the foundation, meets the board with foundation staff, and the board asks the staff for a recommendation before voting. The guidelines cover five areas: fit with the foundation’s strategic focus, documented governance that gives developers and users a voice, technical practices such as code review, CI and vulnerability handling, open collaboration under the Four Opens and an OSI-approved licence, and active engagement from a diverse set of developers and users. Meeting all of them does not guarantee confirmation. Kata Containers was confirmed on April 8, 2019, Zuul on April 28, 2019, Airship on October 22, 2019 and StarlingX on June 11, 2020; OpenStack, the project the foundation was formed for, is listed with them.

Who decides#

The Governing Board is built in thirds. Each Platinum member appoints one representative, the Gold members elect as many as there are Platinum members, and individual members, people who sign up for the foundation’s free individual programme, elect the same number again. No company or group of related companies may have more than three representatives, counting its employees elected by individuals, and every corporate member must also belong to the Linux Foundation. In October 2026 the foundation listed seven Platinum members (Ant Group, Ericsson, Huawei, Okestro, Rackspace, Viettel and Wind River), eight Gold members including Red Hat, Canonical and Deutsche Telekom, 59 Silver members and 31 Associate members.

The board approves the budget, sets the lifecycle process for projects and runs elections, while the Linux Foundation keeps custody of the money and takes a fee of 9% of the first $1 million raised each year and 6% above that. The first board under the new charter met on July 8, 2025 and elected Julia Kreger, who had chaired the old board through the move, as its chair.

Joining the Linux Foundation#

Announcing the move in March 2025, executive director Jonathan Bryce said the data-centre market was being reinvented by “the colossal demands of AI as well as virtualization migration and digital sovereignty”, and the foundation pointed to its existing work with the LF on the Open Infrastructure Blueprint, a stack of Linux, OpenStack and Kubernetes. Coverage at the time linked the timing to Broadcom’s licensing changes at VMware, which had sent companies looking for alternatives.

The Linux Foundation said OpenInfra would carry on as before on board positions, project governance, budget and membership. Under the hood, the change was larger: the OpenStack Foundation had been its own non-profit with its own bylaws, and OpenInfra is now a directed fund, the LF’s standard structure for a foundation that raises and spends money for projects, like the CNCF. Member companies had to re-enrol through the LF; in June 2025, with a June 30 deadline, about 40% had done so.

Where it came from2010–2025

Rackspace and NASA launched OpenStack in July 2010. Rackspace held the name and ran the community, and the project’s larger backers argued it had too much influence, so it handed the trademark, the other assets and community management to the new OpenStack Foundation, which launched on September 19, 2012 with more than $10 million in funding commitments and Rackspace co-founder Jonathan Bryce as executive director.

From 2017 the foundation set out strategic focus areas beyond OpenStack and began piloting new projects in them: Kata Containers in December 2017, then StarlingX and Zuul in May 2018. The board wrote guidelines for confirming pilots in early 2019 and confirmed Kata Containers and Zuul that April, Airship in October 2019 and StarlingX in June 2020. In October 2020 the foundation renamed itself the Open Infrastructure Foundation.

By 2025 OpenStack was gaining users again as companies moved off VMware, and the foundation decided to join the Linux Foundation, already home to Kubernetes through the CNCF. The deal closed on June 1, 2025, and the OpenInfra Foundation now runs as a directed fund of the LF.

Why it’s built this way

A foundation for more than OpenStack: Kata Containers was its first project under a container infrastructure focus area; staff told the board it brought in companies that had never backed OpenStack and built bridges to the cloud-native community.
Pilot first, confirm later: Staff could support a new project straight away, while the board waited for evidence of working governance and a diverse community before committing to it for the long term.
Keep its board and members inside the Linux Foundation: The move was meant to add the LF’s reach without changing how the community was run, so the LF promised OpenInfra would keep its board positions, project governance, budget and memberships, and the charter still lets individual members elect a third of the board.
The Four Opens: Open source alone allows one company to control the design and roadmap, so the foundation also asks for open design, open development and an open community.

Timeline

2010
Rackspace and NASA launch OpenStack in July
2012
OpenStack Foundation launches on September 19 and takes over the OpenStack trademark
2017
Kata Containers becomes the first pilot project outside OpenStack, in December
2019
Board adopts confirmation guidelines; Kata Containers, Zuul and Airship confirmed
2020
StarlingX confirmed in June; renamed the Open Infrastructure Foundation in October
2024
OpenInfra Labs archived as a pilot project in January
2025
Joins the Linux Foundation, announced in March and completed on June 1; new board meets in July

Sources · facts checked 2026-10-28

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