The founder of Valve, Gabe Newell, has long been publicly declaring how good the Linux operating system is and how bad is the Microsoft Windows 8 OS happens to be–despite the fact that the vast majority of the key players in the company’s Steam platform use just Windows. Now the Bellevue company just reached a new milestone by officially joining the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to promote the penguin OS.

Valve Software is one of three new members to join the nonprofit Linux Foundation. Cloudius system and HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) are the other two companies that want to continue to actively promote the development of Linux.

Mike Sartain, head of the department Valve Linux, described the decision grab a membership the silver (lowest) level as one of the many ways in which Valve is investing in the development of games for Linux. This investment is about $20,000 per year, for which Valve obtains the right to vote on the board of the Foundation, the right to use the logos, access to members-only materials, and the ability to open their own working groups and support on the use of Linux in their products.

“Joining the Linux Foundation is one of many ways Valve is investing in the advancement of Linux gaming,” Sartain said. “Through these efforts we hope to contribute tools for developers building new experiences on Linux, compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux, and ultimately deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users.”

On this occasion, the Foundation has published a short video in which Gabe Newell shows the importance of Linux in the Valve strategy, and Linus Torvalds says how important it is for Linux, especially Linux desktop.

In September, Valve announced it would be using Linux as the basis of its Steam Machine line of games consoles. The company announced SteamOS, a proprietary operating system built around the Linux world that will bring its popular front-end store gaming and entertainment software to living room computers, allowing Valve to indirectly enter the home console gaming market.

Linux and the future of gaming in a whole new world

By joining the foundation, Valve will be able to improve their Steam Machine and also more directly benefit from the network of developers which work on Linux itself. Linux offers Valve access to a platform that already has billions invested in it. The company gets to take advantage of a community developing at phenomenal pace: the Linux kernel changes 8 1/2 times an hour with 10,000 lines of new code written per day.

“Take graphic processing for example, which is incredibly important to gaming. It will always be able to take advantage of the latest hardware every 3 years. In high performance computing (HPC), there has been trend toward graphic processing unit (GPU) systems, where large clusters of graphics cards are used for visualizing oil fields of the coast of Rio, for example. Any improvements to Linux from the HPC industry to better optimize GPU would immediately benefit Valve,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation.

Besides contributing tools to the Linux community, Valve also hopes to compel hardware manufacturers to prioritize support for Linux and to eventually deliver an elegant and open platform for Linux users.

”If you look at all the real innovation in massive multi-player games, in-game currencies and self-generated worlds, they all came from really open platforms,” said Zemlin.

Meanwhile Sartain explains that Valve’s action is to focus simultaneously on three aspects: the creation of tools for game developers to Linux, encouraging manufacturers to better support Linux, and build its own elegant and open platform for Linux users. Joining the Linux Foundation has even more to mobilize the company in these efforts.

“It could lead to new input methods that maybe the folks of Valve never thought of,” Zemlin said. ”Somebody could take SteamOS and create a hardware profile that is somehow battery driven and is an actual wearable interface that is sort of a mobile Oculus Rift.”

The move is yet another step away of Valve from Microsoft. Valve’s plan is to try and get top games onto Linux, in the hopes that will help consumers make the jump to the open platform.