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BT embraces open source for business
FossBazaar forum gets a new member

By David Meyer

Published: Friday 25 July 2008

BT has joined FossBazaar, an enterprise open-source community and workgroup of the Linux Foundation.

The communications and IT giant has already been a member of the Linux Foundation since 2005. According to a statement this week, BT joined FossBazaar because it wants to help "accelerate the adoption of free and open-source software in business". Apart from the Linux Foundation, other sponsors of FossBazaar include HP, Novell, Google and SourceForge.

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BT is joining as a strategic partner. According to the statement, the company will "dedicate free consultancy time and assistance to the forum, in addition to contributing to white papers". BT said the extra investment in free and open-source software (Foss) ties into the company's move "from being a traditional telco to a software-driven communications services company".

Jeremy Ruston, BT's open-source innovation chief, said: "Open source is vital to BT's transformation and the wider software community at large. We hope that our active community of software developers at BT continue to develop free and open-source software."

In its statement, BT also said it was "committed to using free and open-source software throughout its entire organisation".