Network Time Foundation’s membership highlights larger initiative extending engagement across open source software communities.
PALO ALTO, Calif. – October 17, 2019 – The Open Source Initiative® (OSI), the global organization working to promote and protect Open Source Software, is pleased to announce the new affiliate membership of Network Time Foundation (NTF). NTF develops, maintains, and administers a variety of open source projects, including Ntimed, Linux PTP, RADclock, General Timestamp API, and, most significantly, the Network Time Protocol, one of the oldest continuously running protocols on the internet. NTP delivers the accurate, synchronized time that is a bedrock assumption of the moment-by-moment operations of networking computing. NTP communicates and synchronizes computer clocks robustly and efficiently.
While Network Time Foundation was established relatively recently, in 2011, to provide direct services and support to improve the state of accurate computer network timekeeping in the general community, development of NTP dates back to 1981 and has served as essential infrastructure enabling the Internet as we know it, and ensuring our modern world runs on time. Network Time Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public benefit organization, develops, produces and maintains the most widely used open source precision time synchronization software, and has led the engineering and development of related IETF protocol and algorithmic standards. Secure and reliable timekeeping is essential to record-keeping in all industries, from financial to medical and beyond. Without NTF and their projects, the flow of information to the world’s interconnected devices would slow, or even stop.
The OSI was chartered in the late 1990s to advance the ideals of open source development and raise awareness and adoption of open source software. Today, the OSI continues to promote and protect open source software and the communities that create and maintain it. As the steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD), as the certifying body for OSI Approved Open Source Licenses, and by establishing such certification as the standard for open source software development and distribution, the OSI has become a cornerstone of software freedom.
“Network Time Foundation successfully applied to OSI to have the NTP License approved as an open source license back in 2008, and NTF is pleased to increase its participation and cooperation with the OSI and its members,” said Harlan Stenn, NTP’s Project Manager, and Release Engineer.
“It is a real honor to welcome Network Time Foundation to the OSI as an affiliate member,” said Patrick Masson, General Manager of the Open Source Initiative. “There are just some open source projects fundamental, essential, iconic, to not only making today’s technology-driven world work for us, but that can also serve as a reference point to help others understand how today’s projects can work for us: NTP is one of them.”
The OSI Affiliate Member Program allows any non-profit organization, user community or educational institution—unequivocally independent groups with a clear commitment to open source—to join the OSI in support of our mission to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source software and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.
About Network Time Foundation
Network Time Foundation is all about advancing and supporting these efforts. The scope of this work ranges from helping to craft the precise description of how to exchange time (standardizing protocols and behaviors), writing high-quality software and documentation, understanding and accommodating how things behave in a wide variety of real-world situations and helping people and organizations trust that they have reliable and accurate timestamps. They do their level best to make sure that Network Time is running, ready and available to everyone who needs it. Please visit https://www.nwtime.org for more information about Network Time Foundation.
About The Open Source Initiative
Founded in 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) protects and promotes open source software, development, and communities, championing software freedom in society through education, collaboration and infrastructure, stewarding the Open Source Definition, and preventing abuse of the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement. The OSI is a public charity with global vision based in California. For more information about the OSI, please see https://opensource.org.