Canonical is pleased to announce it is now a Gold Sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, a non-profit that creates open source building blocks for critical infrastructure software. 

Canonical has supported the foundation’s work since 2025, co-sponsoring the development of projects like sudo-rs. The new €40,000/year contribution will help the foundation continue developing and maintaining memory-safe system utilities written in the Rust programming language.

“We’re grateful to Canonical for stepping up in a big way to support our mission. Maintenance of critical infrastructure software is notoriously difficult to fund, yet it’s essential work. Our Gold and Silver sponsors provide flexible, undirected support that makes this possible. This enables us to guarantee the long-term security and reliability of the projects in our Data compression, Time synchronization, and Privilege boundary initiatives.“

– Erik Jonkers, Chair of Trifecta Tech Foundation

The next phase in the collaboration will focus on the adoption of ntpd-rs as the default time synchronization client and server in Ubuntu. Canonical aims to introduce ntpd-rs for testing in Ubuntu 26.10, making it a default in Ubuntu 27.04. With support from the Trifecta Tech Foundation, the transition will deliver gpsd IP socket support, multi-threading support for NTP servers, support for multi-homed servers, and robust AppArmor and seccomp profiles for ntpd-rs. The work Canonical is funding will also deliver support for gPTP (Generalized Precision Time Protocol), which is ideal for deployments in connected vehicles.  

“Increasing memory safety in Ubuntu is a critical part of improving the resilience of devices, servers and PCs worldwide. The adoption of sudo-rs by default in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS signaled a shift from “experimental feature” to “new security baseline” for memory safety. I’m delighted to be supporting the Trifecta Tech Foundation to continue the leadership of memory-safe alternatives to critical software for the benefit of the open source community.“

– Jon Seager, VP Engineering, Ubuntu

Learn more about our work to adopt Rust-based system utilities in Ubuntu. 

About Canonical

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support, and services. Its portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments, and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone.

Learn more at https://canonical.com/