The following was posted on the Foundation Blog http://blogs.apache.org/ by ASF Chairman Jim Jagielski:
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is excited to welcome Facebook as the newest addition to our roster of sponsors. Sponsoring the ASF helps us grow existing projects, incubate new initiatives, promote community development, host user events, expand our outreach, and provide the infrastructure that keeps the Foundation running on a day-to-day basis. We are grateful for the generous support of Facebook as Gold Sponsors. With Open Source in its DNA, Facebook is an enthusiastic champion and active contributor to the ASF, including the Hive subproject of Apache Hadoop, as well as the popular incubating projects Thrift and Cassandra – all originally developed at Facebook. Facebook joins ASF Platinum Sponsors Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; Gold Sponsor Hewlett-Packard; Silver Sponsors Progress Software and Springsource/VMWare; and Bronze Sponsors BlueNog, Intuit, Joost, and Matt Mullenweg.
