Tencent is one of the biggest tech companies in China.
As the $500 billion internet giant is increasing its focus on open source. it becomes a platinum member of the Linux Foundation, making it one of a few companies that offer the highest level of support to the Linux Foundation.
Other tech companies included here, are: AT&T, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm, Samsung and VMware.
"We are honored to be a Platinum member of The Linux Foundation. Open source is core Tencent’s technical strategy," stated Liu Xin, general manager of Tencent’s Mobile Internet Group.
Previously, Tencent has already been associated with Linux and its foundation.
As a matter of fact, Tencent is a founding member of the Linux Foundation's deep learning program that was launched earlier in 2018.
But with it becoming a platinum member, which is considered the highest tier, Tencent is having further advantage as its executives can sit at the board of directors, and able to work more closely with the organization.
Tencent also benefits as it can tap into the foundation's collective expertise and also experience. Furthermore, it can also shape the direction of Linux, which is a piece of software that its business is built on.
Tencent's pledge, is to offer "further support and resources” to foundation projects and communities, and to also contribute its open source microservices project called TARS and an open source name service project (TSeer) to The Linux Foundation.
Its Angel AI project which is open source, is also contributed to the foundation.
Tencent’s biggest competitor, Alibaba, is also maintaining a large presence in the open source community.
Alibaba has been a gold member since 2017, and has invested resources to the prohect as a part of its aggressive push for Alibaba Cloud computing service.
Earlier in 2018, Tencent also joined another open-source industry body - the Open Compute Project (OCP) community - as a part of its push towards open source.