New Directors Join Linux Foundation Board

*The Linux Foundation Appoints Three Tech Industry Leaders to its Board of
Directors  *


*Erica Brescia, **Jeff Garzik and Nithya Ruff bring a breadth of expertise
and insight to the organization creating the largest shared technology
investment in history*


*SAN FRANCISCO, November 2, 2016 – *The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit
organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced
the appointment of Erica Brescia, co-founder and COO of Bitnami; Jeff
Garzik, co-founder of Bloq; and Nithya A. Ruff, director of Western
Digital’s Open Source Strategy Office, to its Board of Directors. Ms. Ruff
and Ms. Brescia join as At-Large Directors, and Mr. Garzik comes on board
as the representative of Linux Foundation Silver members.

Ms. Brescia and Ms. Ruff will take the place of Larry Augustin and Bdale
Garbee as At-Large Directors. Mr. Garzik replaces Matt Jones of Jaguar Land
Rover.

“The Board of Directors and the entire Linux Foundation organization are
delighted to welcome Nithya, Erica and Jeff,” said Jim Zemlin, executive
director. “They will help guide the strategy of The Linux Foundation, the
home to some of the most successful open source projects and largest shared
technology investment in history. The open source community at large and
our nearly 800 members will benefit from the insight and expertise each of
these individuals brings. We thank Larry, Bdale and Matt for their long and
faithful service on the Board and look forward to their continued
participation in the community.”

*New Directors Bring Diversity of Perspectives*

*Erica Brescia*

Ms. Brescia is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Bitnami. With
more than one million deployments per month, Bitnami provides the largest
source of applications and development environments to the world’s leading
cloud service providers, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google
Compute Platform and Oracle Cloud Platform. Prior to co-founding Bitnami,
Ms. Brescia held various sales and management positions at T-Mobile, as
well as working as a consultant with Chekiang First Bank in Hong Kong. She
holds a B.S. in business administration from the University of Southern
California.

Ms. Brescia has been a dedicated builder of diverse, globally distributed
technology and business teams, and has been featured as a keynote speaker
at OpenStack Summit and OSCON.

To further those goals, Bitnami founded the Bitnami Bootcamp, which
provides free education and training on cloud, open source and containers,
for recent college graduates and self-taught technologists living in
southern Spain.

As a YC Founder, Ms. Brescia is also an active mentor of aspiring
entrepreneurs in the technology and related industries, as well as being an
angel investor in a number of early stage startups.

“Open source technologies make possible the incredibly rapid innovation
that we see in tech-driven sectors today,” Ms. Brescia commented. “Shared
R&D in the form of open source helps companies like Bitnami thrive, while
creating value for others. I’m proud to be a part of the organization
that’s propelling that collaboration.”

*Jeff Garzik*

Mr. Garzik has long been at the center of developing and commercializing
open source software surrounding bitcoin and blockchain. Before co-founding
Bloq to develop enterprise-grade blockchain solutions, he spent five years
as a Bitcoin core developer, and 10 years at Red Hat. His work with the
Linux kernel is now found in every Android phone and data center running
Linux today.

Mr. Garzik serves on the board of Coin Center and the advisory boards of
BitPay, Chain, Netki and WayPaver Labs. He was also recently appointed to
the World Economic Forum Expert Network as an expert in Information
Technology.

“I’m excited to bring Bloq’s expertise in developing blockchain software to
The Linux Foundation,” Mr. Garzik said. “Projects like Hyperledger are
emblematic of the future of open source: bringing together the efforts of
developers to fundamentally alter global finance, digital identity and
beyond.”

*Nithya Ruff*

Ms. Ruff first glimpsed the power of open source while at SGI in the 1990s
and has been building bridges between hardware developers and the open
source community ever since. She’s also held leadership positions at Wind
River (an Intel Company), Synopsys, Avaya, Tripwire and Eastman Kodak.

Ms. Ruff has been a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to
new people in open source for many years. She has also been a promoter of
valuing diverse ways of contributing to open source, such as in marketing,
legal and community. She is co-leader of the Women of OpenStack group and a
liaison into the OpenStack Foundation, as well as a sponsor of the Women in
Open Source (WIOS) Lunch at Linux Foundation events and an active leader of
WIOS advocating for reducing barriers for women and underrepresented
minorities. In 2015, Ms. Ruff was invited by Red Hat to be on a diversity
leaders’ panel at the “All Things Open” conference.

In recognition of her work in open source both on the business and
community side, Ms. Ruff was named to *CIO* magazine’s most influential
women in open source list. Ms Ruff was also the founding president of the
Women’s Innovation Network at Western Digital, which is dedicated to the
development of women’s highest potential in the workplace.

Ms. Ruff said: “I’ve been fortunate to work in an environment at Western
Digital that values the contributions of every individual and that
encourages diversity in open source communities. Through its training,
events and now projects, The Linux Foundation is working to create an
inclusive open source culture that stretches across organizations. I
anticipate being able to help deepen that work as more industry
professionals of all backgrounds get involved in open source.”

*About The Linux Foundation*

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world's top
developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open
technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide
open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by
creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in
2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to
scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact
not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at
www.linuxfoundation.org.



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*Media Contact:*

Laura Kempke

The Linux Foundation

lkempke@linuxfoundation.org