Meta has announced that the PyTorch framework, which it has been working on for the last six years, will be managed by the PyTorch Foundation going forward, which will itself be a part of the Linux Foundation. The PyTorch Foundation will be led by a governing body which has representatives from AMD, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Meta, Microsoft Azure, and NVIDIA.
The PyTorch framework has been developed openly over the years, being licensed under a liberal BSD licence. The framework has been also been utilized by a massive 150,000 projects over the years, including Tesla’s Autopilot and Uber’s Pyro.
The new PyTorch Foundation says it will abide by four principles going forward. They include (1) remaining open, (2) maintaining neutral branding, (3) staying fair, and (4) forging a strong technical identity. With so many companies being involved with the board, the foundation will seek to separate business from technical governance of PyTorch.
While Meta is handing over the reins of the project, it will continue to invest in PyTorch and use it as the primary framework in its artificial intelligence research and production. The transfer will see minimal disruption, with the code, core project, and developer operating models all remaining the same.