Joint Development Foundation Celebrates 10 Years of High-Impact Open Standards Innovation and Development

Decade of growth and global impact marked by new ISO standard, revamped membership model, and launch of OpenSTX Foundation

DENVER – Open Source Summit North America – June 23, 2025 – The Joint Development Foundation (JDF), part of the Linux Foundation family, today celebrates 10 years of advancing high-impact open standards, open source, and open data projects. Created to lower the barrier to entry for collaborative standards, the JDF has grown into a global force—supported by more than 500 member organizations and 3,500 participants—providing a streamlined, vendor-neutral framework for safe, efficient, and collaborative development. As the need for open standards and interoperable technologies continues to grow, JDF will remain a trusted home for open source communities shaping the future of digital infrastructure.

To mark this milestone, the JDF is announcing several key achievements:

• The launch of the OpenSTX Foundation, the JDF’s 36th traditional standards collaboration, which is standardizing a next-generation protocol for industrial wireless.
• A refreshed collaboration agreement offering new flexibility and choice for standards projects and contribution models.
• The successful publication of the 3MF File Format Specification Suite as an ISO/IEC JTC 1 international standard—the JDF’s sixth such success.
• The release of the second edition of the State of Open Standards report, providing critical insights into how open standards shape innovation in today's global technology landscape.

Over the past decade, the JDF has played a crucial role in modernizing the standards development landscape. Traditional approaches to standardization can be challenging for the fast-moving software industry, which often prioritizes shipping working code alongside functional specifications. The JDF has grown rapidly by embracing an open, transparent model that removes barriers and accelerates results. Its pre-negotiated templated frameworks allow organizations to launch standards and interoperability initiatives swiftly—without the typical legal and logistical friction. This structure empowers organizations to focus on innovation, customer needs, and real-world impact, while maintaining strong protections around IP and antitrust compliance.

“The Joint Development Foundation (JDF) is unique in that it is the only standards development organization designed to bridge standardization and open source collaboration models. It was specifically created to reduce friction for standards collaboration," said Jory Burson, Vice President of Standards at the Linux Foundation. "Over the past decade we have proven that open, agile standards development is not only possible, it’s essential. Our growth reflects the trust that global companies, researchers, and communities place in our model. As we look to the future, JDF will continue to be a home for efforts that drive meaningful, interoperable innovation across industries.”

Enterprises of all sizes—from startups to global leaders—have turned to the JDF to tackle shared challenges in interoperability, file formats, data exchange, open data, provenance, and compliance. More than that, they have relied on the foundation's standards activities as a means to deliver value to their organizations, to promote industry best practices, and to foster innovation in the marketplace. Looking ahead, the JDF will continue to focus on providing organizations of all sizes with the means to quickly and easily collaborate on building standards.

“Open source and standards development are converging," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. “Over the past decade, the Joint Development Foundation has championed this convergence, proving that when you bring open communities together with a clear, neutral framework, you can move faster, innovate broadly, and deliver technologies that define entire industries.”

The Joint Development Foundation invites organizations—large and small—to launch and grow their standards initiatives within its ecosystem. To learn more about JDF, including how to get involved and participate, please visit https://jointdevelopment.org/. 

Supporting Quotes

“The publication of the 3MF specification as an ISO/IEC standard is a major milestone—not just for additive manufacturing, but for how an open and extensible standard can be developed to future proof interoperability in a rapidly evolving sector. The Joint Development Foundation made it possible for us to move fast, collaborate openly, and deliver a specification that’s already in use across the industry. Now, with ISO recognition, we’ve set the stage for even broader adoption and long-term sustainability.”

— Duann Scott, Executive Director, 3MF Consortium

“The Joint Development Foundation provides a full spectrum of standards, open source, and open data options enabling collaborations ranging from small specification development efforts to projects leading to international standardization. Setting up new organizations, which used to take months of complex legal negotiations, can be cut down to days using JDF’s proven legal agreements and operational structures. This means we can launch impactful projects to rapidly deliver real-world impact, all while embracing standards development best practices.”

— David Rudin, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft

“One of JDF’s greatest strengths is its commitment to adapting governance to meet project needs. The newly updated Membership Agreement is a great example—it provides flexibility for diverse contributors while preserving the legal certainty that enterprises depend upon. JDF continues to deliver on the innovative governance model needed for the fast-paced accomplishments of open standards, open source, and open data projects..”

— Ann Woodliff, Member, Joint Development Foundation Advisory Council

“When launching the OpenSTX Foundation, we needed a home that could support both rigorous technical collaboration and global inclusivity. The Joint Development Foundation gave us exactly that—a proven framework for open, vendor-neutral standards that empowers contributors from academia, startups, and global enterprises alike. It’s the right foundation for scaling STX into an industrial-grade wireless standard.”

— Michael Baddeley, Chairperson of OpenSTX Foundation and Principal Researcher, Technology Innovation Institute

About the Joint Development Foundation

The Joint Development Foundation (JDF), part of the Linux Foundation family of projects, accelerates organizations developing technical specifications, standards, data sets, and source code. JDF provides the corporate and legal infrastructure, experienced support staff, and extensive network necessary to achieve the highest levels of industry and international standardization. For more information, please visit us at jointdevelopment.org.

About the Linux Foundation 

The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, LF Decentralized Trust, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, Zephyr, and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-useage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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