cloudparts

TARS Foundation

A Linux Foundation sub-foundation for microservices, formed in 2020 around Tencent’s TARS framework. It is still listed as active, but has published nothing since April 2022; the code carries on in its GitHub repositories.

1 projects in this catalogPart of the Linux FoundationWebsite

What it is

The TARS Foundation is part of the non-profit Linux Foundation. TARS, the RPC framework and microservice platform Tencent has used internally since 2008, became an LF project in June 2018, and on March 10, 2020 the project was turned into a foundation, meant to be a neutral home for “a constellation of open source projects” around microservices. Arm, Tencent, AfterShip, Ampere, API7, Kong and Zenlayer were named as members at the launch, and Nanjing University had joined by the first anniversary in 2021. Its website describes it as “a non-profit, microservices foundation, part of the Linux Foundation”.

It has been quiet for years. The newest item on its website is from April 19, 2022, about the TARS developer certification; its landscape repository was last updated in October 2022; and the website footer still says 2019. In October 2026 the Linux Foundation’s public project registry listed the TARS Foundation as active, with no dissolution date, and the code is still maintained: TarsCpp and the TARS framework had releases in 2026. No announcement of a merger or closure could be found.

For someone choosing a technology, the badge marks projects whose name and governance sit with the LF rather than with Tencent alone, but in practice development rests with a small group of maintainers: one developer made most of the commits to TarsCpp in 2025 and 2026. The foundation’s projects page groups them by area rather than by maturity: the TARS framework itself; TSeer and TarsGateway for service governance; the DCache store, now archived; K8STARS for Kubernetes; and test and tooling projects such as TarsBenchmark and TarsJMeter. There are no maturity stages.

Its projects in this catalog

TARSOpen sourceA Linux Foundation project since June 2018, and the founding project of the TARS Foundation in March 2020Tencent’s microservice platform, in use there since 2008: an IDL and binary protocol, RPC libraries for C++, Go, Java, Node.js and PHP, and its own registry, config, logging, monitoring and deployment services with a web console.

In depth

How it was set up#

At its launch the LF said the foundation would have a governing board, a technical oversight committee and processes for incubating and graduating new projects. By its first anniversary it also had an outreach committee, a community advisor and ambassadors, and an End User Community Plan with eight companies taking part. Its website still links to the governing board, technical oversight committee, outreach committee and a charter dated October 2020.

Most of the activity came in its first two years. It launched a landscape of the microservice ecosystem in July 2020, four projects joined in the first year, the LF released a free edX course on building microservice platforms with TARS in 2020, and the LF and the foundation opened the Certified TARS Application Developer exam in April 2022. The LF’s project registry also files the NextArch Foundation, launched in November 2021 to work on next-generation architecture, under the TARS Foundation.

Where it came from2017–2026

Tencent open-sourced TARS in April 2017, after using it internally as TAF since 2008. In June 2018 the Linux Foundation announced that TARS and TSeer, its service-discovery framework, had become LF projects, and Tencent became a Platinum member of the LF.

On March 10, 2020 the TARS project became the TARS Foundation. The LF framed it as a neutral home for more projects that solve microservice problems, with TARS at the centre; it said Tencent by then ran TARS microservices on more than a million nodes. In its first year the foundation launched a landscape, admitted four projects and built out its committees.

After the certification exam opened in April 2022 the foundation stopped publishing news. The TARS code has carried on in its GitHub repositories, maintained by a small group of developers, while the foundation itself remains on the LF’s books.

Why it’s built this way

A foundation around one framework
The LF presented the foundation as a neutral home for more projects that solve microservice problems, with TARS at the centre, its own governing board and technical oversight committee, and processes for incubating new projects.
Training and certification to grow users
To grow the number of developers who know the framework, the foundation worked with LF Training on a free edX course in 2020 and an entry-level certification for TARS developers, opened in 2022.

Timeline

  1. 2017

    Tencent open-sources TARS in April

  2. 2018

    TARS and TSeer become Linux Foundation projects in June

  3. 2020

    TARS Foundation formed on March 10; landscape launched in July; free edX course

  4. 2021

    First anniversary: four new projects and an end-user programme

  5. 2022

    Certified TARS Application Developer exam opens; the last news on the foundation’s website, in April

  6. 2026

    Still listed as active by the LF; TARS framework and TarsCpp releases

Sources · facts checked 2026-10-28

Improve this page on GitHub