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From Linux kernel codification to AI astatine scale, observe Microsoft’s unfastened root improvement and impact.
Microsoft’s engagement with the unfastened root assemblage has transformed the institution from a one-time skeptic to present being 1 of the world’s starring unfastened root contributors. In fact, implicit the past 3 years, Microsoft Azure has been the largest nationalist unreality contributor (and the 2nd largest wide contributor) to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). So, however did we get here? Let’s look astatine immoderate milestones successful our travel and research however open-source technologies are astatine the bosom of the platforms powering galore of Microsoft’s biggest products, similar Microsoft 365, and massive-scale AI workloads, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Along the way, we person besides introduced and contributed to respective open-source projects inspired by our ain experiences, contributing backmost to the assemblage and accelerating innovation crossed the ecosystem.
Embracing unfastened source: Key milestones successful Microsoft’s journey
2009—A caller leaf: 20,000 lines to Linux. In 2009, Microsoft contributed much than 20,000 lines of codification to the Linux kernel, initially Hyper‑V drivers, nether General Public License, mentation 2 (GPLv2). It wasn’t our archetypal unfastened root contribution, but it was a disposable infinitesimal that signaled a alteration successful however we physique and collaborate. In 2011, Microsoft was successful the apical 5 companies contributing to Linux. Today, 66% of lawsuit cores successful Azure tally Linux.
2015—Visual Studio code: An unfastened root hit. In 2015, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a lightweight, open-source, cross-platform codification editor. Today, Visual Studio and VS Code unneurotic person much than 50 million monthly progressive developers, with VS Code itself wide regarded arsenic the astir fashionable improvement environment. We judge AI experiences tin thrive by leveraging the open-source community, just arsenic VS Code has successfully done implicit the past decade. With AI becoming an integral portion of the modern coding experience, we’ve released the GitHub Copilot Chat hold as open root connected GitHub.
2018—GitHub and the “all-in” commitment. In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub, the world’s largest developer assemblage platform, which was already location to 28 million developers and 85 million codification repositories. This acquisition underscored Microsoft’s transformation. As CEO Satya Nadella said successful the announcement, “Microsoft is all-in connected unfastened source… When it comes to our committedness to unfastened source, justice america by the actions we person taken successful the caller past, our actions today, and successful the future.” In the 2024 Octoverse, GitHub reported 518 cardinal nationalist oregon open-source projects, implicit 1 cardinal contributions successful 2024, astir 70,000 caller nationalist oregon open-source generative AI projects, and astir a 59% year-over-year surge successful contributions to generative AI projects.
Open root astatine endeavor scale: Powering the world’s astir demanding workloads
Open-source technologies, similar Kubenetes and PostgreSQL, person go foundational pillars of modern cloud-native infrastructure—Kubernetes is the 2nd largest open-source task aft Linux and present powers millions of containerized workloads globally, portion PostgreSQL is 1 of the astir wide adopted relational databases. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure’s managed Postgres instrumentality the champion of these open-source innovations and elevate them into robust, enterprise-ready managed services. By abstracting distant the operational complexity of provisioning, scaling, and securing these platforms, AKS and managed PostgreSQL lets organizations absorption connected gathering and innovating. The operation of unfastened root flexibility with cloud-scale reliability allows services similar Microsoft 365 and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to run astatine monolithic standard portion staying highly performant.
COSMIC: Microsoft’s geo-scale, managed instrumentality level powers Microsoft 365’s modulation to containers connected AKS. It runs millions of cores and is 1 of the largest AKS deployments successful the world. COSMIC bakes successful security, compliance, and resilience portion embedding architectural and operational champion practices into our interior services. The result: drastically reduced engineering effort, faster time-to-market, improved outgo management, adjacent portion scaling to millions of monthly users astir the world. COSMIC uses Azure and open-source technologies to run astatine planet-wide scale: Kubernetes event-driven autoscaling (KEDA) for autoscaling, Prometheus, and Grafana for real-time telemetry and dashboards to sanction a few.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT: ChatGPT is built connected Azure utilizing AKS for instrumentality orchestration, Azure Blob Storage for idiosyncratic and AI-generated content, and Azure Cosmos DB for globally distributed data. The standard is staggering: ChatGPT has grown to astir 700 million play progressive users, making it the fastest-growing user app successful history.1 And yet, OpenAI operates this work with a amazingly tiny engineering team. As Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Group Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie highlighted astatine Microsoft Build successful May, ChatGPT “needs to standard … crossed much than 10 million compute cores astir the world,” …with astir 12 engineers to negociate each that infrastructure. How? By relying connected managed platforms similar AKS that harvester endeavor capabilities with the champion of unfastened root innovation to bash the dense lifting of provisioning, scaling, and healing Kubernetes clusters crossed the globe.
Consider what happens erstwhile you chat with ChatGPT: Your punctual and speech authorities are stored successful an open-source database (Azure Database for PostgreSQL) truthful the AI tin retrieve context. The exemplary runs successful containers crossed thousands of AKS nodes. Azure Cosmos DB past replicates information successful milliseconds to the datacenter closest to the user, ensuring debased latency. All of this is powered by open-source technologies nether the hood and delivered arsenic unreality services connected Azure. The result: ChatGPT tin grip “unprecedented” load—over 1 cardinal queries per day, without a hitch, and without needing a elephantine operations team.
What Azure teams are gathering successful the open
At Microsoft, our committedness to gathering successful the unfastened runs deep, driven by engineers crossed Azure who actively signifier the aboriginal of open-source infrastructure. Our teams don’t conscionable usage open-source technologies, they assistance physique and germinate them.
Our open-source doctrine is straightforward: we lend upstream archetypal and past integrate those innovations into our downstream products. To enactment this, we play a pivotal relation successful upstream open-source projects, collaborating crossed the manufacture with partners, customers, and adjacent competitors. Examples of projects we person built oregon contributed to include:
- Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime): A CNCF-graduated task launched by Microsoft successful 2019, Dapr simplifies cloud-agnostic app improvement with modular gathering blocks for work invocation, state, messaging, and secrets.
- Radius: A CNCF Sandbox task that lets developers specify exertion services and dependencies, portion operators representation them to resources crossed Azure, AWS, oregon backstage clouds—treating the app, not the cluster, arsenic the portion of intent.
- Copacetic: A CNCF Sandbox instrumentality that patches instrumentality images without afloat rebuilds, speeding up information fixes—originally built to unafraid Microsoft’s unreality images.
- Dalec: A declarative instrumentality for gathering unafraid OS packages and containers, generating bundle measure of materials (SBOMs) and provenance attestations to nutrient minimal, reproducible basal images.
- SBOM Tool: A bid enactment interface (CLI) for generating SPDX-compliant SBOMs from root oregon builds—open-sourced by Microsoft to boost transparency and compliance.
- Drasi: A CNCF Sandbox task released successful 2024, Drasi reacts to real-time information changes utilizing a Cypher-like query connection for change-driven workflows.
- Semantic Kernel and AutoGen: Open-source frameworks for gathering collaborative AI apps—Semantic Kernel orchestrates ample connection models (LLMs) and memory, portion AutoGen enables multi-agent workflows.
- Phi-4 Mini: A compact 3.8 billion-parameter AI exemplary released successful 2025, optimized for reasoning and mathematics on borderline devices; disposable connected Hugging Face.
- Kubernetes AI Toolchain Operator (KAITO): A CNCF Sandbox Kubernetes relation that automates AI workload deployment—supporting LLMs, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented procreation (RAG) crossed unreality and borderline with AKS integration.
- KubeFleet: A CNCF Sandbox task for managing applications crossed aggregate Kubernetes clusters. It offers astute scheduling, progressive deployments, and cloud-agnostic orchestration.
This is conscionable a tiny sampling of immoderate of the open-source projects that Microsoft is progressive in—each 1 sharing, successful code, the lessons we’ve learned from moving systems astatine a planetary standard and inviting the assemblage to physique alongside us.
Open Source + Azure = Empowering the adjacent procreation of innovation
Microsoft’s travel with open source has travel a agelong mode from that 20,000-line Linux spot successful 2009. Today, open-source technologies are astatine the bosom of galore Azure solutions. And conversely, Microsoft’s contributions are helping thrust galore open-source projects forward—whether it’s commits to Kubernetes; caller tools similar KAITO, Dapr, and Radius; oregon probe advancements similar Semantic Kernel and Phi-4. Our engineers recognize that the occurrence of extremity idiosyncratic solutions similar Microsoft 365 and ChatGPT trust connected scalable, resilient platforms similar AKS—which successful crook are built connected and sustained by strong, vibrant unfastened root communities.
Join america astatine Open Source Summit Europe 2025
As we proceed to lend to the unfastened root community, we’re excited to beryllium portion of Open Source Summit Europe 2025, taking spot August 25–27. You’ll find america astatine booth D3 with unrecorded demos, in-booth sessions covering a wide scope of topics, and plentifulness of opportunities to link with our Open Source team. Be definite to drawback our league sessions arsenic well, wherever Microsoft experts volition stock insights, updates, and stories from our enactment crossed the unfastened root ecosystem.
1 TechRepublic, ChatGPT’s On Track For 700M Weekly Users Milestone: OpenAI Goes Mainstream, August 5, 2025.