The Linux Foundation Announces Intent to Form New Foundation to Support osquery Community

By Craig Ross June 18, 2019 Press Release

Engineers and developers from Facebook, Google, Trail of Bits and more to help advance osquery through neutral forum

SAN FRANCISCO – June 18, 2019 – Facebook and the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced plans to create a new foundation for the osquery project, which will be dedicated to growing and sustaining a neutral osquery ecosystem. Engineers and developers from Dactiv, Facebook, Google, Kolide, Trail of Bits, Uptycs, and other companies who are using osquery have committed to supporting the project under the new Foundation.

osquery is an open source tool developed by Facebook in 2014 that makes it easier to collect low level system information and detect potential security issues. It works by exposing an operating system as a high-performance relational database. This design makes it possible to easily and efficiently write SQL-based queries to detect and investigate anomalies.

osquery is being used in production by a variety of high scale companies such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Netflix, Palantir, Etsy, and Uber. Osquery also plays an important role in maintaining insight into the security of Facebook’s infrastructure. The osquery community is among the most vibrant in advancing operating system health and security, with more than 280 contributors and 5,000 commits.

“osquery has fostered a lively and active community that continues to develop new capabilities and use cases based on the ability to monitor their infrastructure more easily. We are thrilled to see the growing engagement with this project, and we believe the creation of the osquery Foundation is the best next step to support the community’s ongoing development and priorities,” said Teddy Reed, an engineering manager at Facebook and longtime osquery contributor.

The osquery Foundation will have an open governance model that encourages participation and technical contribution and will provide a framework for long-term stewardship by an ecosystem invested in osquery’s success. A Technical Advisory Board (TAB) made up of active community contributors will help facilitate the transition to this new model and drive the collective priorities set forth by the foundation members.

“Trail of Bits has long believed that osquery was destined to become an essential part of security infrastructure. Our involvement began in 2016 when we contributed the Windows platform support to osquery, and since then we have continuously provided the engineering services for organizations that wanted to grow its capabilities and contribute those improvements to the project. Trail of Bits has only seen interest in the osquery project increase, and we are pleased to know that the project will transition to a foundation and enter a new stage of growth,” said Mike Myres, principal security engineer at Trail of Bits.

“It is our pleasure to welcome the osquery Foundation into the Linux Foundation. Osquery has drastically simplified the process of operating system monitoring, which has unlocked new methods for securing infrastructure, detecting anomalies and more. We look forward to working with the osquery community to develop the Foundation in a manner that will continue to foster the growth and adoption of osquery while supporting the community’s diverse needs,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation.