The Linux Foundation Member Summit 2021

Initially created as a high-performance application runtime for web browsers, WebAssembly is now being adopted by a wide range of applications outside of the browser. Through standardization efforts, WebAssembly is supported by mainstream programming language toolchains and a wide range of operating systems and CPU architectures. It won ACM SIGPLAN’s programming language award for 2021. However, as WebAssembly grows into a universal runtime and encounters many use cases beyond the web browser, standardization efforts lag behind adoption. In this talk, I will explore WebAssembly standards, standard bodies, implementation projects, extensions, and use cases to discuss the pros and cons of standardization vs implementation first approaches. - A brief history of WebAssembly - WebAssembly compiler toolchains - WebAssembly extension standards - WebAssembly standard bodies - Open source WebAssembly runtimes - WebAssembly use cases - Implementation-specific WebAssembly extensions - Linux Foundation’s role in WebAssembly ecosystem