Tokyo (May 24, 2007) – Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc. (Konica Minolta) is pleased to announce that it has become a member of The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux.

The Linux Foundation was founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). The Foundation supports the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, while supported by major Linux and open source companies, and is actively working to promote, protect and standardize Linux.

“Konica Minolta Business Technologies is a major printing vendor. Its participation in our OpenPrinting and Linux Standard Base (LSB) workgroups will help us standardize and improve printing performance and support for the Linux platform,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “Our goal is to make printing ‘just work' on Linux. For us to achieve that we need to work with the community, the distribution vendors and important printer vendors like Konica Minolta Business Technologies.”

Konica Minolta has nurtured various innovative technologies through its long years of experience in the office equipment business. With such experience and expertise, Konica Minolta, now as the member of The Linux Foundation, wishes to contribute to the workgroups by helping to facilitate integration of desktops with multi-functional peripherals (MFPs) and printers for Linux users, and by promoting standardization of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for printing.