Microsoft, a company that has been vocal about its commitment to open source projects, pleasantly surprised the open source community today when it was welcomed into the Linux Foundation as a platinum member.

Even prior to this partnership, Microsoft has had a team dedicated to Linux kernel work. Microsoft even contributed code to enable Linux to run as an enlightened guest on Hyper-V about five years ago. And since then, the team had contributed improvements and new features to the code consistently, according to a Linux Foundation blog post.

“Over the past two years in particular, we’ve seen that engineering team grow and expand the range of Linux kernel areas it’s working on to include kernel improvements that aren’t specifically related to Microsoft products,” writes Jim Zemlin executive director of the Linux Foundation.

From the partnership, the open source community will gain tools and other resources from Microsoft such as the .NET Core, OpenJDK, Docker support in Windows Server, SQL on Linux, and the ability to run native Bash on Ubuntu on Windows, Zemlin writes.

The Linux Foundation is one of many open source projects under Microsoft’s belt. In March, Microsoft joined the Eclipse Foundation and it's been involved with other open source organizations such as the Open Compute Project (OCP) and the Apache Software Foundation. And it is listed as a top open source contributor on GitHub.