Unix operating system and server maker Sun Microsystems stole away Ian Murdock from The Linux Foundation this past March, leaving the newly constituted foundation missing a chief technology officer.

The Linux Foundation today announced Markus Rex will become its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and lead its Linux Standard Base (LSB) initiative and other standardization and technical initiatives for the foundation.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit group dedicated to accelerating Linux's growth, announced on July 24 that Markus Rex, a long-time Linux executive at SUSE Linux AG and Novell, will serve as the Foundation's new chief technology officer.

"This is a great time for the Gates Foundation to embrace GNU/Linux, bringing the value of Free Software to people who might otherwise not hear its value. For the past 10 years the Gates Foundation has expanded access to technology by delivering Windows computers to public libraries.

The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation.

Although Google's take-over of On2 Technologies has only just been completed, already the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is calling on the company to release On2's video codec technology as a patent free standard.

Last week, more than 230 Linux leaders converged on Google's Mountain View, Calif. campus to discuss the most pressing issues for Linux, at the first-ever Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. Today, the Linux Foundation released a statement summarizing the event's main accomplishments, and declared the event a success.

Kernel hacker Ted Ts'o has joined the Linux Foundation as Chief Platform Strategist. He says,"I'm looking forward to continuing the LSB [Linux Standards Base] and other Linux Foundation initiatives to make the Linux platform even more competitive to the benefit of the entire Linux community."

It's time to standardise on KVM, decides the Linux Foundation. For those who are new to this discussion, here is necessary background on Ignition Partners, XenSource, Citrix, and Microsoft. It's reassuring to see that not only Canonical and Red Hat (in that order) realised what was going on.