Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent has become a platinum member of the Linux Foundation.

Announced via a post on the latter's website, this apparently a sign of the firm's commitment to open source projects,. As part of this deal, Liu Xin, GM of Tencent's Mobile Internet Group, will be joining the organisation's board of directors.

“Becoming a Platinum member of The Linux Foundation clearly reinforces the importance of open source to Tencent, and its commitment to the open source community,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation.

“As Tencent’s contributions to open source continue to accelerate, The Linux Foundation is thrilled to work more closely with the company to provide more resources and support to the community. We look forward to collaborating with Tencent to enable more innovation and development to spur the creation of new and exciting technologies in the days ahead.”

Tencent's Xin added: “We are honored to be a Platinum member of The Linux Foundation. Open source is core to Tencent’s technical strategy. We look forward to strengthening our relationship with the international open source community and promoting innovation in cutting edge technology. As a first step, we are contributing our open source microservices project TARS, and open source name service project Tseer, to The Linux Foundation. In addition, we plan to contribute our open source AI project Angel to the LF Deep Learning Foundation. Together, we will help to build a welcoming and energized global open source ecosystem.”

Platinum membership means that Tencent is paying upwards of $500,000 each year to be part of the Linux Foundation - pocket change for a company worth $500bn.