BMW Group Joins the Linux Foundation's Yocto Project

The German carmaker formalizes its contributions with membership in the project that helps developers build custom Linux-based systems

SAN FRANCISCO, July 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced that BMW Group is joining the Yocto Project as a member.

BMW Group's membership restates their commitment to work with, and in, sustainable ecosystems and software and to support open source and key tools they use to build their products. The Yocto Project welcomes this support and looks forward to benefiting from their input and experience. They are joining other members including Intel, Comcast, Arm, Cisco, Facebook (Meta), Xilinx, Microsoft, Wind River, and AWS.

With the rise of devices and sensors being used across every industry, developers today require  a common set of tools that help them manage software stacks, configurations, and best practices tailored for Linux images for embedded and IoT devices. Over the last decade Yocto Project has been tuned for this purpose and today is the de facto set of tools for building and supporting a new generation of devices. In short, it helps developers create custom Linux-based systems regardless of the hardware architecture.

The Yocto Project has grown significantly since it was created, rising to the constantly evolving challenge of building custom operating systems for products in a maintainable and scalable way. The project leads in build system technology with bitwise identical build output every time, advanced software manifests, license handling capabilities, and strong binary artifact reuse among many other developments. Yocto Project 4.0 (aka Kirkstone) was released in April.  Based on Linux kernel 5.15, glibc 2.35, and roughly 300 other recipe upgrades, Yocto 4.0 supports SPDX SBOM generation and is the latest Long Term Support (LTS) release.

"Recognising sustainability in the context of open source is an extremely welcome development, and we look forward to working more closely with BMW Group to further enhance the project" Richard Purdie, Linux Foundation Fellow. "We hope that others will follow their lead in sustainability and together we can strengthen and allow open source projects to reach their full potential".

For more information about the Yocto Project, please visit: https://www.yoctoproject.org/

The BMW Group is the world's leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles with its BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce, and BMW Motorrad brands, and a provider of premium financial and mobility services. The BMW Group production network comprises 31 production and assembly plants  in 15 countries; the company has a global sales network with representatives in over 140 countries.

Long-term thinking and responsible action are the basis of economic success. Ecological and social sustainability, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources are therefore an integral part of our strategy.

The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that creates highly customisable, maintainable, and scalable Linux-based systems primarily for embedded and IOT projects, regardless of the hardware platform and product. For additional information, please visit yoctoproject.org or contact us.

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 2,950 members. The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world's infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, Hyperledger, RISC-V, and more. The Linux Foundation's methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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Contact:
Dan Whiting 
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[email protected]

SOURCE Yocto Project