In a somewhat unusual move, American mobile carrier Sprint has joined the Tizen Association, an industry association that backs new Linux-based MeeGo successor Tizen. The company just announced that Fared Adib, its vice president of products, will serve on the Tizen Association board of directors, which also includes members of Orange, Vodafone, NTT Docomo, and SK Telecom, as well as Intel and Samsung.

Version 1.0 of Tizen was recently released, and a developer conference for it starts today in San Francisco. But while it's certainly one of the better times for Sprint to join, it's still not entirely clear whether the company is in a place to push Tizen as a new OS. Back in 2010, Sprint pledged its support to the failed MeeGo project; in its new press release, the company said that "Sprint continues to support an open mobile ecosystem that enables choice for Sprint customers, and Tizen provides another open and flexible environment for developers to create innovative applications for end users." Samsung has said before that it plans to offer some Tizen phones this year, so it's always possible that we'll see Sprint give them a try.