Their goal is to make the pervasive operating system more sustainable as research indicates a need to improve open source software security, specifically in Linux. A report from the Linux Foundation s Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard University (LISH) found a lack of security efforts in open source software.
It s worth noting Linux has more than 20,000 contributors and 1 million commits as of August 2020. But while there are thousands of Linux developers, Google s contribution to underwrite two full-time Linux security maintainers indicates the greater role security will play in its future. The company also hopes this initiative will motivate other organizations to contribute.