Priyanshu Singh

CNCF- The Open-Source Universe

Table of Contents

What is CNCF?

"The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure. We bring together the world’s top developers, end users, and vendors and run the largest open source developer conferences. CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation."

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is an open-source software foundation that promotes the adoption of cloud-native computing. The CNCF, a subsidiary of the Linux Foundation created in 2015, aims to establish a community of developers, end users, and IT technology and service providers to collaborate on open source projects.

Cloud Native Definition

Cloud-native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.

These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.

"We are a community of doers who enable open source projects including Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and many others."

Why is CNCF needed?

Companies are realizing that they need to be a software company, even if they are not in the software business. For example, Airbnb is revolutionizing the hospitality industry and more traditional hotels are struggling to compete. Cloud-native allows IT and software to move faster. Adopting cloud-native technologies and practices enables companies to create software in-house, allows business people to closely partner with IT people, keep up with competitors, and deliver better services to their customers. CNCF technologies enable cloud portability without vendor lock-in.

CNCF Mission

The CNCF fosters this landscape of open source projects by helping provide end-user communities with viable options for building cloud-native applications. By encouraging projects to collaborate, the CNCF hopes to enable fully-fledged technology stacks comprised solely of CNCF member projects. This is one way that organizations can own their destinies in the cloud.

CNCF Landscape and Projects

Landscape

CNCF Landscape

The common point for every person learning about CNCF is running into this brobdingnagian image and thinking what the hell is that!

This is the CNCF Landscape, a collection of multifarious open-source projects and related tools. It shows the full extent of Cloud Native solutions, many of which come under CNCF. These open-source projects are supported by the contributions of an enormous community.

Projects

CNCF has adopted many projects. To join, the projects must be selected and then elected with a supermajority by the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). The voting process is aided by a healthy community of TOC contributors, which are representatives from CNCF member companies. Member projects will join the Sandbox, Incubation, or Graduation phase depending on their level of code maturity.

Sandbox Projects

These projects are in a very early stage and require significant code maturity and community involvement before being deployed in production. They are adopted because they offer unrealized potential. CNCF helps encourage the public visibility of sandbox projects and facilitates their alignment with existing projects. Sandbox projects receive minimal funding and marketing support from the CNCF and are subject to review and possible removal every twelve months.

Incubating Projects

Projects enter Incubation when they meet all sandbox criteria as well as demonstrate certain growth and maturity characteristics. They must be in production usage by at least three companies, and maintain a healthy team that approves and accepts a healthy flow of contributions that include new features and code from the community.

Graduated Projects

Once Incubation projects have reached a tipping point in production use, they can be voted by the TOC to have reached the Graduation phase. Graduated projects have to demonstrate thriving adoption rates and meet all Incubation criteria. They must also have committers from at least two organizations, have documented and structured governance processes, and meet the Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative’s Best Practices Badge. These projects are mature enough and can be used by end-users for production.

You can view all the projects here: Sandbox Projects, Graduated and Incubating Projects.

CNCF Events

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers leading technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. It is open for students and working professionals to attend. In-person and virtual Scholarships are also available for Students, Active community members, and people from traditionally underrepresented and/or marginalized groups. Scholarships are awarded based on a combination of need and impact. Apart from this, you can also find many other events here.

Resources

Closing Remarks

CNCF is a very beginner-friendly community, their motive is to help each other and grow together. They welcome people of all skill levels and all kinds of contributions. It's a great place for a beginner to start their open-source journey and gather skills and knowledge about many technologies, tools that would be of great help in their career.

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