On June 17th 2011 it was announced that LexisNexis had joined the Linux Foundation (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2011/06/lexisnexis-joins-linux-foundation), for those of you that do not know LexisNexis sells access to their massive legal, educational and private databases for various uses. As a long time user of LexisNexis I understand how massive and in-depth their databases are, in which I am eager to see what kind of filesystem, clustering and database contributions they can make. With the addition of LexisNexis I can see the data center and database capabilities for Linux based systems advancing at a amazing rate in the near future.
On July 5th 2011 it was announced that Toyota has joined the Linux Foundation (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2011/07/toyota-joins-linux-foundation). I should not have to tell you that Toyota is a vehicle manufacturer and they joined the Linux Foundation to contribute to the development of in car communication and infotainment systems. I do not yet understand if their interest is in the Meego In Vehicle System or for using Linux as a base for their own custom in-car systems, but I do know that the presence of a vehicle manufacturer as large as Toyota is a good sign for the future. I look forward to their contributions to the open source and Linux communities, and will be watching their development closely to see how I can help their efforts to build the in-car systems that I would be interested in using.
To these new members and all future members I welcome you to the community and look forward to seeing how the community can help you and how you can help the community to deliver the stable and secure software that will give us all a brighter future.
