Individual Supporters

Help advance the greatest shared resource of our time

Linux, open source software, and collaborative development dominate how technology is built today.

Individual Supporters of The Linux Foundation contribute to massive innovation and help advance the greatest shared resources of our time.

The Linux Foundation aims to bring together open source software professionals, developers, sysadmins, and students to advance important community and industry initiatives that increase diversity in tech and access to new technologies.

We use funds from Individual Supporters to help drive our diversity and inclusiveness programs. With our community, we have supported groups like:

  • Women Who Code, a global non-profit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers;
  • Transtech, an incubator for LGBTQ with a focus on empowering transgender people;
  • Free Geek, which recycles and refurbishes used computers and provides desktop training for underserved populations;
  • #YesWeCode, which is focused on training low-opportunity youth to become high-level coders; and
  • Outreachy, an initiative that coordinates and underwrites programming internships for women, transmen, and genderqueer people.

Becoming an Individual Supporter Pays for Itself Immediately

  1. $100 off Certification Exams from the Linux Foundation Certification Program. These savings pay for your purchase with just one use.
  2. Up to 10% discount on Linux Foundation’s open-enrollment training courses.
  3. Option to purchase your own Linux.com email address. Don’t suffer from jane.smith2315@mail.com.
  4. 30% off registration fees on one Linux Foundation event every year. Eligible events include Open Networking & Edge Summit Europe, Open Networking & Edge Summit North America, KVM Forum, Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America, Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Automotive Linux Summit + Open Source Summit Japan, Open FinTech Forum, Linux Security Summit North America, Linux Security Summit Europe

For more information, see the FAQ below.

If you’re currently an Individual Supporter, you have the option to purchase a Linux.com email alias for life.

FAQs

Introduced in January 2016 and modeled after other community programs, the Individual Supporter program provides an avenue for individuals to help advance important community and industry initiatives that increase diversity in tech and access to new technologies.

Funds generated through the program are used to support important community and industry organizations that are advancing diversity in tech and increasing access to new technologies and learning opportunities for underserved populations. In  2019, funds were donated to Outreachy and CommunityBridge Mentorships, which underwrites paid stipends for diverse candidates undergoing internships in various Linux Foundation hosted projects.

Individual Supporters receive benefits such as the option to purchase a lifetime linux.com email alias, and discounts on Linux Foundation events, training, and certification exams.

The main changes are:

  • Individual Supporter fee has increased from $49 to $99.

  • Individual Supporters will be given the option to purchase a lifetime linux.com email alias.separately for $150

  • Individual Supporter role expires after 12 months for all.  All Individual Supporters will have an opportunity to renew.
There is an annual fee of $99.00 USD for becoming an Individual Supporter.  Your role as an Individual Supporter remains current for 12 months from the time payment of fees is completed.
You can renew your Individual Supporter status by going to https://enrollment.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/?project=tlf&product=01t2M000005wBb0QAE.  Your role as an Individual Supporter will be renewed for 12 months from the time payment of fees is completed.  (For example, if your role expires January 30, 2023, and you complete payment of Individual Supporter fees on January 25, 2023, your Individual Supporter status will be extended until January 24, 2024.). In near future, we will be updating the site to support auto-renewals via credit card.
You can re-activate your Individual Supporter status by going to https://enrollment.lfx.linuxfoundation.org/?project=tlf&product=01t2M000005wBb0QAE.
There are no other discounts available on the Individual Supporter fees.
Because we are a 501(c)(6) organization, contributions to The Linux Foundation are not deductible as charitable contributions. However, they may be deductible as trade or business expenses if ordinary and necessary in the conduct of your business.

In order to ensure your contact info is updated in our systems correctly, we kindly request all names and addresses be filled out in English.

When a charge is declined by the bank, we show as much information as we receive about the decline. For example, we might receive a message that the zip/postal code does not match the one that the bank has on file. In the majority of cases, the decline reasons are generic and the bank does not share specific information as to why a charge was declined.

If all of the card information seems correct, your only recourse is to contact your bank to get more information and to ask that future charges be accepted.  When contacting your bank, you may also wish to check whether any restrictions are placed on cross-border transactions or on online transactions that exceed a certain amount.  Alternatively, you may want to try with a different credit card.  (Please also note that debit cards often present issues, so switching to a credit card may help.)

The Linux Foundation securely processes all credit card transactions through Stripe. Your full credit card number is never transmitted to Linux Foundation systems during checkout and is stored by Stripe, a PCI Level 1 Service Provider.

The linux.com email alias is available for purchase by Individual Supporters only.  If you already are an Individual Supporter, you can purchase the lifetime linux.com email alias at https://joinnow.platform.linuxfoundation.org/?project=tlf&product=01t2M000005wBazQAE#/enrollment.

If you have not yet signed up as an Individual Supporter, you may do so at https://joinnow.platform.linuxfoundation.org/?project=tlf&product=01t2M000005wBb0QAE.  Once you’ve completed the process to become an Individual Supporter, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to purchase the linux.com email alias.

To prevent spam from bots to our Individual Supporters, we do not provide an online tool to check whether a certain alias is available. However, we would be happy to check on it for you if you contact us at:

https://cb-login-static.linuxfoundation.org/cb/help

When a charge is declined by the bank, we show as much information as we receive about the decline. For example, we might receive the message that the zip/postal code does not match the one that the bank has on file. In the majority of cases, the decline reasons are generic and the bank does not share specific information as to why a charge was declined.

If all of the card information seems correct, your only recourse is to contact your bank to get more information and to ask that future charges be accepted.  When contacting your bank, you may also wish to check whether any restrictions are placed on cross-border transactions or on online transactions that exceed a certain amount.  Alternatively, you may want to try with a different credit card.  (Please also note that debit cards often present issues, so switching to a credit card may help.)

Log into myprofile.linuxfoundation.org with your Individual Supporter username and click on the settings section of the Linux.com email widget.  Keep in mind that the linux.com email feature is a vanity email forwarding service only. We do not provide, nor do we plan to provide, SMTP, IMAP, POP3 or Webmail. It is quite easy to configure your email alias. Pick any alias – example johnd@linux.com if your name is John Doe. There is no guarantee of an alias being available. So if your request fails, you can retry or contact us at http://support.communitybridge.org/. Once your alias is set, you can forward the emails on that alias to any personal email id of yours – example Jdoe@gmail.com.
The linux.com email feature is a vanity email forwarding service only. We do not provide, nor do we plan to provide, SMTP, IMAP, POP3 or Webmail.

There are no discounts for the lifetime Linux.com Email Add-On.

For those of you who use Gmail and the linux.com forwarding service, many of our users immediately after setting up their linux.com forwarding service test from Gmail and never receive their test mail. We have found that any mail sent from the same Gmail account that is also the same final delivery Gmail account is not displayed in the Gmail Inbox. This is possibly due to Gmail considering the mail a duplicate of the Gmail Sent folder copy. This is an idiosyncrasy with Gmail and not a reflection on the linux.com forwarding service. Sending from any other account will deliver as expected.

Example:
account@gmail.com –> alias@linux.com –> account@gmail.com
In the above example you would not see the email in your inbox due to the Gmail idiosyncrasy. Before sending a support request to the Linux Foundation please test from a different account