On Tuesday, Apache Software Foundation Chairman Jim Jagielski announced that Facebook is the organization’s newest gold sponsor.
That means that Facebook has committed to donating at least $40,000 a year to the Apache foundation. Facebook has already been donating code.
“With Open Source in its DNA,” Jagielski wrote, “Facebook is an enthusiastic champion and active contributor to the ASF, including the Hive subproject of Apache Hadoop, as well as the popular incubating projects Thrift and Cassandra – all originally developed at Facebook.”
But while Facebook is dominating the social networking arena, and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in investor capital, it’s not clear that the company actually turns a profit.
Facebook is a private company and is not obligated to public financial information, however, leaked financial data from 2008 suggests Facebook could still be burning cash every month.
What is certain though is Facebook’s commitment to open source technology.
Facebook Senior Open Programs Manager David Recordon blogged about the ASF sponsorship and open source technology.
“Open source allows us not just to make technologies like memcached scale beyond its original intent, but to release technologies like Thrift for others to build upon as well.”
