Dirk Hohndel and Hisao Munakata Bring Longstanding Commitment to Linux and Open Source to Foundation’s Board
SAN FRANCISCO, April 18, 2017 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the appointment of Hisao Munakata of Renesas and Dirk Hohndel of VMware to its Board of Directors. Linux Foundation Gold members elected Messrs. Hohndel and Munakata to represent them for a two-year term. They take the places of outgoing Board member Alan Clark of SUSE and Hisashi Hashimoto of Hitachi, who has moved to a Platinum Director seat.
Linux Foundation Gold members include Accenture, Alibaba Cloud, Citrix, Dell EMC, Doky, Facebook, Hart, Panasonic, Renesas, SUSE, Toshiba, Toyota and VMware.
“We thank Alan for his service and recognize his many contributions to this organization,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We look forward to continuing our strong collaboration with Alan for the benefit of the open source community.”
He continued: “Today we’re pleased to welcome Hisao and Dirk, who bring decades of commitment to Linux and to its large developer community worldwide. They have each distinguished themselves for their continued support for kernel development and for key projects that surround Linux.”
Mr. Hohndel has actively contributed to Linux since its creation in the early 1990s. He joined VMware as chief open source officer and vice president in 2016. He was previously chief Linux and open source technologist at Intel, where he had served since 2001. Before joining Intel, Mr. Hohndel was president and chief technology officer of SUSE and Unix architect at Deutsche Bank.
Renesas has been a substantial contributor to the Linux kernel for 10 years and Mr. Munakata, a senior director at the company, leads its upstream kernel development team. He also helps champion Renesas’ work on several Linux Foundation projects that support the Linux community. These include Automotive Grade Linux, the project creating open source solutions for automotive applications; the community-led Yocto Project, which has developed an embedded Linux development environment; and the Long Term Support Initiative, which is devoted to the maintenance of a common Linux base for use in consumer electronics products.
“I look forward to working closely with my fellow Board members to advance the mission of The Linux Foundation,” said Mr. Munakata. “The organization has grown quickly over the past several years as open source has become the way infrastructure software is created. As a Director on the Board, I will be able to work even more closely with the Linux community to foster future progress.”
Mr. Hohndel stated: “I’ve been privileged to be a part of the Linux kernel community since the early days. As a co-founder of the Free Standards Group and having played a role in the formation of The Linux Foundation, being elected to the Board feels like I have come full circle. I am honored by the opportunity to serve a community that has been central to my career for the last 25 years.”
About The Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.
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