The Cloud Foundry Foundation, which oversees the (almost) eponymous open source project for PaaS cloud computing, today announced a new CEO, Sam Ramji, who says he is committed to continuing to grow the project and the industry collaboration that undergirds it.

The organization is touting Ramji’s appointment as evidence of the project’s commitment to promoting cooperation between companies in building an open source cloud PaaS that fits the needs of industry partners across the channel. “Ramji’s absence of ties to any of the Foundation’s member companies underscores the community’s embrace of coopetition between major vendors to drive Cloud Foundry’s success,” the organization said in a statement.

Promoting continued cooperation between companies to support Cloud Foundry is a key goal for Ramji in his new role. “Cloud Foundry has quickly become the way applications are built on the cloud,” he said. “Major corporations on the supply and demand sides of the cloud market are putting significant resources behind what we’re doing. They’re doing so because they know they can commit to Cloud Foundry as their cloud platform with confidence.”

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, which supports Cloud Foundry as a collaborative project, added, “The growth of the Cloud Foundry project is really phenomenal. We’re seeing it primarily through increasing community contributions and new investments from the most innovative companies in the cloud computing space. When an open source project is experiencing this kind of growth, it is critical to have a neutral leader in place who can support the project and community and facilitate that momentum. Sam’s experience in the application development market and open source community makes him the perfect fit for helping to drive this project into the future.”

Ramji has previous experience at Apigee, BEA WebLogic Integration (now owned by Oracle) and Microsoft‘s open source division. He is also board secretary of the Outercurve Foundation.