Open Container Initiative establishes self governance model

Today the Open Container Initiative (OCI) has formalized a technical governance model for the project, which aims to create some standards around containers for interoperability and compatibility between containers from different vendors.

The core focus of the technical committee is to engage developers, increase co-operation among members and ensure vendor neutrality.

They have set-up a Technical Developer Community (TDC) for the project that includes independent maintainers as well as developers from the founding members.

The main responsibility of the TDC is to maintain the project and handle the releases of both the runtime and specification.

They have also created a Technical Oversight Board (TOB), whose members will be appointed by the OCI and the TDC. “The TOB will work closely with the TDC to ensure cross-project consistencies and workflows. The governance model also includes a Trademark Board to oversee the development and use of the OCI’s trademarks and certifications,” the OCI said in a press statement.

Members of the OCI will collaborate to ensure the technical work aligns with the following values:

• Composable: all tools for downloading, installing and running containers should be well integrated but independent.
• Portable: the runtime standard should be usable across different hardware, operating systems and cloud environments.
• Secure: isolation should be pluggable, and the cryptographic primitives for strong trust, image auditing and application identity should be solid.
• Decentralized: discovery of container images should be simple and facilitate a federated namespace and distributed retrieval.
• Open: the format and runtime will be well specified and developed by a community to ensure code development drives specification development.
• Minimalist: The OCI Specifications aim for simplicity, to ensure stability, optimize innovation and encourage experimentation.
• Backward compatible: OCI Specifications and OCI Projects strive to be as backward compatible as possible with prior releases.

The OCI has also become Linux Foundation Collaborative Project and will benefit from the foundation’s infrastructure.

Commenting on the development, Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation said, “Collaborative development continues to prove its ability to transform markets and advance emerging technologies. The OCI is a welcome addition to The Linux Foundation Collaborative Project ecosystem.”

The OCI also announced new members and now has a broad range of players as members including: Amazon Web Services, Apcera, Apprenda, AT&T, ClusterHQ, Cisco, CoreOS, Datera, Dell, Docker, EMC, Fujitsu Limited, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Infoblox, Intel, Joyent, Kismatic, Kyup, Mesosphere, Microsoft, Midokura, Nutanix, Odin, Oracle, Pivotal, Polyverse, Portworx, Rancher Labs, Red Hat, Resin.io, Scalock, Sysdig, SUSE, Twistlock, Twitter, Univa, Verizon Labs, VMware and Weaveworks.

This is a positive development, as container technologies are becoming popular in the cloud space, the industry needed standardization and a vendor neutral approach so clients can not only move between different vendors but also use a mix of technologies from different players.