Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, compares the launch of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) for MCP to Google's initial donation of Kubernetes to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
“I think there's a somewhat similar situation here with the caveat of saying, like, 10 times faster. Like, just day one, so much momentum around MCP. So much interest in this. And then also, 10 years of CNCF to sort of teach the developer community and the vendor community how to do this well, where, you know, investment is not mutually exclusive to great technical outcomes. I think has been super positive. So I think this is going to move super fast.”
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More from Jim Zemlin
Disclosure
Linux Foundation avoided frontier LLMs due to multibillion-dollar compute and data costs
“The Linux Foundation kind of took a pass on a, like, frontier model world, because in the open source space, having connection to an internet, the internet, And some intelligence and a computer. That's sort of entry. In the world of frontier LLMs, it's a compu…”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:24:42One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
AssertionNot checkable as stated
AAIF launch saw more 24-hour inbound interest than any Linux Foundation project
“And 50 companies on day one, you know, a huge set of folks in line to participate and join my email inbox. I'm sure your guys are too, is like full in 24 hours. How do I participate? We want to contribute. How do I get in there? I've never seen that kind of in…”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:09:48One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
Insight
Software standards and open source development must now be co-developed together
“I think the world of standards and open source development are just merging, right? You sort of co-develop these things together.”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:15:17One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
Insight
Vendor committee roadmaps typically fail in open-source foundations without technical curation
“It's more of a, not just more, but essentially a technical effort, not something where a committee of, you know, folks from vendors get together and say, well, my product should be in this roadmap, and that guy's product should be in this roadmap. It tends to …”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:19:52One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
Opinion
Agentic AI warrants a dedicated foundation because agent developers are a distinct discipline
“Agents are a distinct enough set of technology that it merits its own community.
[5135] Swyx (Shawn Wang): Separate from data and AI.
[5136] Jim Zemlin: Yeah, because like a PyTorch dev isn't really doing a ton of stuff in agent land, right?”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:25:28One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
AssertionSupported
Technical participation in AAIF does not require formal foundation membership
“You don't need to become a member to participate on the technical side.”
Jim ZemlinDec 28, 2025▶ 1:21:40One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parria and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation
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