Industry giants partner for Open Container Project

A wide spectrum of technology companies have announced a partnership in order to create an open container format and runtime, using technology that has been donated by container specialist Docker.

A group of companies including Amazon, Cisco, CoreOS, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, VMware and even Microsoft have agreed to work together under a vendor-neutral, open source, open-governance model to form the Open Container Project, which is to be housed under the Linux Foundation. The primary aim will be to produce an open standard, based on Docker technology, for container format and runtime.

“With the Open Container Project, Docker is ensuring that fragmentation won’t destroy the promise of containers,” explained the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin of the project. “Vendors and technologists of all kinds will now be able to collaborate and innovate with the assurance that neutral open governance provides. We applaud Docker and the other founding members for having the will and foresight to get this done.”

“We believe the timing is right to create a common standard that would ensure compatibility and encourage innovation throughout the ecosystem,” added Docker’s Solomon Hykes of the move. “It is for this reason that we are donating our container format and runtime to the standard. We believe that after two years, the Docker container runtime code and technology have matured to the point that they would benefit from independent governance outside the Docker project.”

Announced at DockerCon, the project has already begun releasing source files for the runC runtime and container format through its official GitHub repository at http://github.com/opencontainers , while you can uncover more information on the project by heading to http://opencontainers.org.