Linux Foundation Announces Key Industry Support for Linux Vendor Firmware Service (Dell, HP, Lenovo, NVIDIA)

Welcome to the September 2026 edition of the Linux Foundation Newsletter The open agentic AI community is coming together in San Jose for AGNTCon + MCPCon North America, October 22–23. More than 3,500 developers, researchers, maintainers and technical leaders will gather for 150 sessions across 11 tracks focused on MCP, agent infrastructure, security, interoperability and production agent systems. Register by October 8 to save. Beyond the event, six developments stand out this month. TheAgentic AI Foundation welcomed the Gates Foundation as its first philanthropic member, bringing the perspectives of underserved communities into the development of agentic AI and supporting broader participation in the firstMCP Dev Summit Nairobi. The Linux Foundation welcomed TRACE, an open specification developed with AMD, Anthropic, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OPAQUE and TII to provide portable, verifiable runtime and compliance evidence for AI agents and confidential workloads. TheXen Project launched the Xen Safety Committee to develop shared engineering artifacts for functional safety certification and extended security coverage for Xen releases to five years.OpenSearch won the Analytics & Data Intelligence Solutions category in SiliconANGLE’s2026 TechForward Awards as the project celebrates five years of community growth. NewLF Energy research found that open source software can deliver two to five times greater net value for grid operators and introduced a standardized framework for evaluating those investments. LF Energy also welcomed three new members and three new projects, advanced Power Grid Model to Early Adoption after more than 10 million downloads, and documented how TenneT achieved a tenfold improvement in grid security analysis performance with PowSyBl. You’ll also find new Linux Foundation research, training and certification opportunities, registration for upcoming events, and project news spanning cloud native, AI, energy, cybersecurity, automotive, telecommunications, mainframe, geospatial and open hardware. >>Read on for even more news, research, and opportunities from across the Linux Foundation. Contents Education Opportunities LF Event Highlight LF Research: Survey + report LF Europe: Community Updateslinuxfoundation.orglinuxfoundation.org Linux Foundation Projects: Featured news LF Events: Mark your calendar! Follow us! * * linuxfoundation.org Edu cation Opportunitieshubs.la hubs.latraining.linuxfoundation.org 🎒Back to School Means Back to Skills New skills are the new school supplies. Save up to 40% on Linux Foundation Education training and certifications and build practical expertise across AI, cybersecurity, cloud native, and more. Plus, the new Model Context Protocol Associate (MCPA) certification is here, giving you a way to validate your foundational knowledge of MCP and the technologies powering agentic AI. training.linuxfoundation.org * * linuxfoundation.org LF Event Highlight The open agentic AI ecosystem is coming together in San Jose. Join 3,500+ developers, researchers, maintainers, and technical leaders atAGNTCon + MCPCon North America, October 22–23, for two packed days focused on the technologies shaping the future of AI agents. Dive into 150+ talks across 11 tracks, hands-on workshops, and conversations with the people building MCP, agent infrastructure, multi-agent systems, developer tooling, security, interoperability, and more. This is where the agent stack is being built. Be part of it. View the full schedule - Explore the keynote speakers - Register by Oct 8 + SAVE! * * linuxfoundation.org LF Research: Catch up on two new reports this month (one is hot off the press!) and participate in one or both of our surveys! linuxfoundation.org The latest LF Research and LF Energy report, The Open Source Value Proposition for the Energy Sector, introduces a benefit-cost framework to help energy grid operators answer the question: How do we systematically quantify the ROI of open source software? Grid operators should read the report to learn how to adopt this framework to transform procurement debates into objective, evidence-based roadmaps. * * linuxfoundation.org FINOS and LF Research are excited to share the write-up from the June 2026 AI in Finance Leadership Summit,AI and Open Source in Financial Services! Summit discussions revealed that firms face an urgent patch window, accelerating costs, and compliance hurdles as they grapple with new agentic workflows. Read the full report to discover recommendations for managing token spend and strengthening enterprise resiliency! * * research.net What’s happening in the cloud native world? From new tool adoption to the biggest challenges teams are facing today, we want to know what your experience looks like. The CNCF and LF Research have teamed up once again to capture the pulse of the cloud community, and we need your perspective to make the picture complete. If you’re just starting your journey or you're a seasoned cloud developer, your input helps shape the research that guides the industry. * * research.netresearch.net LF Research is partnering with CNCF on a second survey, sponsored by Broadcom, asking the community how they are running compute across containers, VMs, bare metal, and serverless. This survey has only 12 questions! It should take you just a few minutes. Your input will help guide cloud native open source priorities and infrastructure tooling for the developer community. * * linuxfoundation.org LF Europe: Community Updates events.linuxfoundation.org Save the date on 6 October because the full conference schedule for The Linux Foundation Member European Forum is now live, and it's shaping up to be one of the year's most important gatherings for open source leaders in Europe. Taking place in Prague, Czechia, the Forum brings together business and technical leaders from across the Linux Foundation's member community for a single, focused day of conversation on the issues shaping Europe's open source future, chief among them, digital sovereignty. A few sessions worth planning your day around: Presenting the Europe Spotlight Report — Mirko Boehm, Sr. Director for Community Development, and Paula Grzegorzewska, Sr. Manager, Strategic Partnerships, both LF Europe, unpack the latest data on the state of open source in Europe. How to Be a Good Citizen Contributor to Open Source in the Age of Regulation — Roman Zhukov (Red Hat) on what responsible contribution looks like as compliance requirements tighten. AI Slop vs. Open Source: Why the Next Contribution Crisis Is Already Here — Philippe Ensarguet (Orange) on the quality threats facing open source projects as AI-generated contributions scale. Transparency Upstream, Evidence Downstream: Manufacturers and Open Source Under the CRA — William Janssen (TrustEngine) on what the Cyber Resilience Act actually requires of manufacturers working with open source. The Forum is an invitation-only gathering for Linux Foundation member organizations, designed to be small and focused enough for the kind of candid, high-level conversation that a larger conference can't always deliver. That sai