Community Rallies Behind Open Container Initiative

AT&T, ClusterHQ, Datera, Kismatic, Kyup, Midokura, Nutanix, Oracle, Polyverse, Resin.io, SUSE, Sysdig, Twitter and Verizon back effort; draft charter and specification open for comments

PORTLAND, Ore., O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference (OSCON), July 22, 2015 – The Open Container Initiative (OCI), represented by a broad coalition of industry leaders focused on common standards for software containers, today announced during a keynote at OSCON that the draft charter and specification are available for comments and that 14 new companies are backing this industry-wide initiative.

The OCI, referred to previously as the Open Container Project, was announced just last month at DockerCon and is being hosted at The Linux Foundation as a Collaborative Project.

Companies signaling their formal commitment to this effort include AT&T, ClusterHQ, Datera, Kismatic, Kyup, Midokura, Nutanix, Oracle, Polyverse, Resin.io, Sysdig, SUSE, Twitter and Verizon. Amazon Web Services, Apcera, Cisco, CoreOS, Docker, EMC, Fujitsu Limited, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Joyent, Mesosphere, Microsoft, Pivotal, Rancher Labs, Red Hat and VMware are also committed to the Open Container Initiative. As part of the formation, Docker Inc. donated its base container format at runtime to serve as cornerstone technologies under the governance of the OCI, while leadership from Application Container spec (“appc”) is also represented.

A draft charter for OCI is available now and the maintainers are sharing the project’s day-to-day technical governance in a Maintainer’s Guide. Maintainers have refined the specification, which is available on GitHub, and contributors can comment on specific pull requests today. A formal draft will be published for comments within the month.

“The overwhelming interest in the Open Container Initiative is representative of both the opportunity containers offer for application development and the challenges we face with fragmentation,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “With such strong community support and collaboration, we’re confident this effort will rise to the opportunity.”

The container movement has gained immense popularity among users because of the promise of portability, agility and interoperability across a broad set of infrastructures and tools. The rapid proliferation of container-based solutions – supported and leveraged by an ecosystem of millions of developers, tens of thousands of enterprises, thousands of contributors and hundreds of technology companies – has inspired industry leaders to collaborate on an open, standard container format and runtime in order to preserve that portability and interoperability for users.

Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. By spreading the collaborative DNA of the largest collaborative software development project in history, The Linux Foundation provides the essential collaborative and organizational framework so project hosts can focus on innovation and results. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects span the enterprise, mobile, embedded and life sciences markets and are backed by many of the largest names in technology. For more information about Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects, please visit:http://collabprojects.linuxfoundation.org/

Further detail on the effort and a copy of the OCI’s charter can be found at www.opencontainers.org.

Comments from Companies

AT&T
“AT&T sees tremendous value in these initiatives,” said Toby Ford, assistant vice president of Cloud Technology, Architecture and Planning at AT&T. “We are very interested in helping to shape the container standards and architecture of the next-generation ecosystem that will deliver on the promise of cloud-enabled software. We are fully committed to this technology direction, as demonstrated by our Domain 2.0 initiative to migrate 75% of our targeted network onto a software defined network directed cloud.”

ClusterHQ
“ClusterHQ is excited to support the efforts of the OCI. Standardization of underlying container technology is great for users and will lead to more innovation throughout the ecosystem. We are looking forward to continued work with other industry leaders on the project,” said Luke Marsden, CTO and co-founder, ClusterHQ.

Kismatic
“It’s extremely exciting to see Docker behind the formation of OCI. Our goal at Kismatic is to ensure that Kubernetes is the standard way people build, ship and run their distributed microservices-based applications. In standardizing on a common container runtime and format, OCI promises to further our goal by giving the industry peace of mind that through shared collaboration and governance, fragmentation will be avoided. We’re proud to participate and drive this initiative forward!” said Patrick Reilly, founder and CEO, Kismatic.

Kyup
“Improvements in container technologies in recent years already organically began the process of a new standard to be widely supported all around major cloud vendors, thus making it incredibly easy for tech professionals to run their web projects in the way that best fits their own needs, rather than those of the provider. We are especially enthusiastic about joining our efforts into developing this process even further with the OCI project and helping to accelerate its mission to give software engineers even more flexibility and freedom,” said Tenko Nikolov, CEO of Kyup.

Midokura
“Docker is wildly successful, but this is still just the beginning. We anticipate a world of many containers, so it makes perfect sense for MidoNet to collaborate around a standard that works for all,” said Sandro Mathys, MidoNet Community Manager.

Nutanix
“Containerization radically simplifies application development and deployment while bringing seamless cross-platform portability for applications. Nutanix’s mission is to innovate and deliver technologies that radically simplify application and infrastructure management. We are pleased to join the OCI in efforts to establish common and open standards around container technology and enabling the community in our efforts to deliver Invisible Infrastructure for the enterprise,” said Binny Gill, Principal Engineer, Nutanix.

Oracle
“Oracle has a long history with container technologies, from Oracle Solaris Zones to support for Linux Containers and Docker. The Open Container Initiative can help drive standardization and make it easier for customers to successfully run applications in containers while this area continues to evolve,” said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle

Polyverse
“Containers are revolutionizing how organizations build, deploy and secure software — a revolution that is foundational to the state-of-the art security Polyverse provides. The OCI’s goal of creating common standards for this transformational technology will help drive even greater adoption and innovation,” said Alex Gounares, CEO, Polyverse Corporation.

Resin.io
“We are excited to join the Open Container Initiative and help bring container innovation and standardisation to the Internet of Things arena,” said Alexandros Marinos, founder and CEO, Resin.io

SUSE
“Containerized applications are the next wave of innovation dramatically reshaping the enterprise IT landscape,” said Michael Miller, vice president of global alliances and marketing for SUSE. “The Open Container Initiative, by focusing on a common standard, will put technology vendors on the same page to boost access to a wide array of applications on Linux. And developing and deploying containerized applications in virtualized and cloud environments will become even easier. These benefits perfectly fit SUSE’s commitment to bringing open and accessible solutions to our customers and partners.”

Sysdig
“Containers are enabling a new way of building and deploying applications, and the Open Container Initiative is an important step towards increasing adoption of this revolutionary technology. As the first company devoted to container-native visibility, Sysdig is honored to be included in this initiative and is looking forward to helping shape the future direction of containers,” said Loris Degioanni, Founder & CEO, Sysdig

Twitter
“The standardization of containers is important to Twitter infrastructure and we are thrilled to support the Open Container Initiative. We look forward to contributing code and our expertise to the initiative,” said JC Martin, director of engineering, cloud infrastructure, Twitter.

Verizon
“The use of containers is becoming the foundation for packaging and deploying applications. Leveraging the power of an open community to drive a common standard will ensure compatibility and allow for continued innovation. Verizon supports open communities, standards, and is pleased to support the OCI,” said Lawrence Rau, Director, Technology, Verizon Labs.

About the Open Container Initiative (OCI)
The Open Container Initiative is an open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtime. Projects associated to the Open Container Initiative can be found at https://github.com/opencontainers. Contact the project maintainers on IRC at #opencontainers. Contact the Linux Foundation about the OCP at info@opencontainers.org.

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found atwww.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation and Linux Standard Base are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
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The Linux Foundation
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