Nov. 2, 2021 WAKEFIELD, Mass – The Rust Foundation, an independent non-profit dedicated to supporting the Rust Project, recently welcomed its 15th Silver Member. The addition was part of a rapid expansion of the Foundation’s membership roster, with companies including Arm, Sentry, Knóldus, Spectral, Automata, Activision, and Toyota Connected all joining over the past few months. The 15th Silver Member represents a milestone that validates the importance of the Rust Foundation’s purpose and demonstrates the extraordinary faith that prominent high-tech institutions are placing in the continued application and growth of the Rust Project.
The tech world’s rapid adoption of the Rust programming language has made the Rust developer community one of the fastest growing for more than a year and created unprecedented demand for the work of the engineers maintaining and contributing to the Rust open source project and ecosystem. Finding a way to channel support to the Rust project is the mission of the Rust Foundation, which was founded as a partnership between AWS, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Mozilla earlier this year.
Achieving the milestone of 15 Silver Members is a testament to the value of the Rust Foundation’s investment in programs that directly impact the community of Rust maintainers – the individuals who are the lifeblood of the Rust programming language. This support includes the Rust Foundation’s recent funding of infrastructure on-call support for Rust Project maintainers, relieving a team of volunteers from the 24/7 support they’ve provided for over ten billion downloads of more than 69,000 crates.
“The Rust programming language makes it possible for developers to build secure and sustainable software,” said Rust Foundation Chairwoman Shane Miller, who also leads the Rust team at Amazon Web Services. “The Rust Foundation creates a platform for companies benefiting from the value of Rust to contribute to maintainer health and wealth, ecosystem completeness and stability, and growing the developer community.”
The Rust Foundation model is inspired by the collaborative spirit that has defined the Rust Project. This includes direct representation from the Rust Project’s governance through both Core team representatives and project area directors, who join with the representatives from Rust Foundation’s member companies to form a board of directors that guides the Rust Foundation's activities.
“We build software that will potentially run on all future Toyota cars in North America. Combining Deep Learning and the efficiency and security Rust delivers is something our developers are extremely excited about,” said Ryan Wheeler, Executive Director of Engineering at Toyota Connected. “More efficient programming means better-performing software, which is great for developers, great for our customers, and great for our company. Finding a way to further contribute to this effort through the Rust Foundation just made sense for Toyota Connected.”
The new Silver Members join a diverse roster of companies building on and supporting Rust, including Clever Cloud, Ferrous Systems, Futurewei, KDAB, Open Source Security, ParaState, Tag1, and Zama. Platinum members include Google, Amazon Web Services, Huawei, Mozilla, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Microsoft.
“Software is increasingly important in realizing the full potential of computing today,” said Andrew Wafaa, Senior Director of Software Communities, Arm. “The Rust programming language is delivering on the performance, reliability, and efficiency software principles needed for the next era of computing, and as a new member of the Rust Foundation, Arm is committed to contributing to the growth and development of the Rust programming language alongside other leaders in the industry.”
The Rust Foundation will be hosting its first quarterly AMA on November 16th at 9am PT/12pm ET. Please join hosts Mark Rousskov, Secretary and Project Director, Core and Shane Miller, Chairwoman and Member Director, Amazon Web Services as they share the latest Foundation updates and answer questions from the community. Register here.
For more about the Rust Foundation, visit our website and learn about becoming a member. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay up to date.
About the Rust Foundation #
The Rust Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization with a mission to support the Rust Project. It perpetuates and accelerates innovation, connecting the needs of maintainers with the resources of companies in a collaborative, transparent community that builds awareness and appreciation of Rust, including its positive impact on businesses and the planet. Learn more at foundation.rust-lang.org.