The world's biggest technology companies have agreed to donate millions of dollars to set up a group that will fund improvements in open source programs like OpenSSL. The Core Infrastructure Initiative is a multi-million dollar project housed at The Linux Foundation to fund open source projects that are in the critical path for core computing functions. Inspired by the Heartbleed OpenSSL crisis, The Initiative's funds will be administered by the Linux Foundation and a steering group comprised of backers of the project as well as open source developers and other industry stakeholders.

The steering group will work with an advisory board of open source developers to identify and fund open source projects in need. Support from the initiative can include funding for fellowships for key developers to work full time on the open source project, security audits, computing and test infrastructure, travel, face-to-face meeting coordination and other support. Early supporters include Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Qualcomm, Rackspace and vmware.

Members of CII will evaluate open source projects that are essential to global computing infrastructure and are experiencing under-investment.