In recognition of the increasingly central role open source technology has played for the networking sector, the Linux Foundation today named Arpit Joshipura as its general manager for networking and orchestration.

Joshipura, a veteran tech executive who has worked at Dell, Ericsson, and Nortel, among others, is considered by the organization to be a foundational contributor to open source software in general and networking in particular. Most recently, he’s been the chief marketing officer for Prevoty, an application security startup in Los Angeles.

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His main job, according to the Linux Foundation’s announcement of the move, will be to “harmonize the open source networking ecosystem with the goal of rapidly increasing deployments as open source networking goes mainstream.”

What that means in practice remains to be seen, although the foundation said that there would be more in-depth news around that topic in April at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said that the centrality of open source technology to the networking sector cannot be overemphasized.

“Open source is the linchpin for massive transformation in the networking industry, similar to the server market of two decades ago,” he said in the announcement. “We are thrilled to have [Joshipura] on board to help us usher in the next generation of open networking technologies, which will require professionally supported open source development at every level of the networking software stack.”

The Linux Foundation is the host of a large number of network-focused open source projects, including OpenDaylight, OPNFV, OpenSwitch and many more. Centralizing the foundation’s role in those projects under the aegis of a single leader could help them work together as smoothly as possible.