Some might bring chips and dips, others potato salad, while the rogue ones bring Tequila, but the TM Forum has pitched up to the Linux Foundation’s LA party with a bag full of Open APIs.

The pair were already in partnership prior to this announcement, but the Open Networking Summit was deemed the perfect shindig to announce things are starting to get serious. As part of the new partnership, the TM Forum will allow its APIs to be shared across the entire Linux Foundation community for use in any of its open source projects.

“Together with TM Forum, we can shift the global industry one step closer to harmonization of open source and open standards,” said Arpit Joshipura, GM of Networking at The Linux Foundation. “Our joint efforts will help accelerate deployment and adoption for end users.  We look forward to this continued and intensified collaboration and how it will advance future networks.”

“Open Source and open standards – including TM Forum’s Open APIs and Open Digital Architecture – have a pivotal role to play in transforming the agility of our industry, ensuring it is fit for the next decade,” said Nik Willetts, CEO of TM Forum. “We’re delighted to be working with The Linux Foundation to bring together our joint expertise, and look forward to partnering with a range of open source projects over the coming months.”

As it stands, the TM Forum has a suite of 50 REST-based Open APIs which are used by 4,000 software developers in 700 companies worldwide. Open source projects are becoming increasingly popular with the telco space and this partnership introduces platform-agnostic industry standards to the mix. This could mean different things to different organizations, but standardization is generally a bit quicker, cheaper and removes the threat customization.

For a more in-depth look at the partnership Carol Wilson from our sister-site Light Reading is at the event. While there are certainly technological benefits to the partnership, it would also be worth noting the administrative benefits of the tie up.

Firstly, a closer relationship means the two can communicate directly as opposed to using members as the middlemen. Secondly, moving to Apache 2.0 license terms removes the potential threat of contributors claiming IP rights on any breakthroughs.