The eBPF Foundation was formally established, and Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Isovalent became founding members
eBPF is a technology that can run sandbox programs in the operating system kernel. eBPF allows us to safely extend the functionality of the kernel without changing the kernel’s source code or loading kernel modules.
eBPF has been designed for the Linux kernel since its birth in 2014, in May of this year, Microsoft announced a new project of eBPF for Windows, enabling eBPF to run on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 and later versions. This project allows developers to use the familiar eBPF toolchain and API on existing versions of Windows.
Today, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Isovalent jointly announced the establishment of a new eBPF foundation under the Linux Foundation. These companies stated in the announcement of the establishment of the eBPF Foundation:
Today, we are announcing the formation of a new eBPF Foundation under the overall umbrella of the Linux Foundation. eBPF, one of the most influential technologies in the infrastructure world, has seen explosive growth in the last few years. We are establishing a foundation around it to help support the growth of the technology and facilitate collaboration among the many eBPF-based open source projects that are evolving.
eBPF has changed the way operating systems and infrastructure services are designed. It bridges the gap between the kernel and userspace. It encourages and accelerates innovation and is a major leap forward in open source technologies for network, security, application profiling/tracking, and system observability use cases. eBPF allows users to combine and apply logic even in multiple subsystems that are traditionally completely independent.
