Google Proposes Knative As A CNCF Incubator Project. Thank You Google!

Google Proposes Knative As A CNCF Incubator Project. Thank You Google!
Google Proposes Knative As A CNCF Incubator Project. Thank You Google!

Santa came early this year! Last week, Google announced that it was proposing Knative as a CNCF incubator project. Thank you Google. This is a move that will benefit the project, all its users and developers, and the cloud-native community at large. At TriggerMesh, we could not be happier to see this. We have built an application integration platform on top of Knative, we have contributed upstream since day one of the project, and we sincerely hope that the CNCF community will accept the project and take it for incubation.

While this comes as a Google announcement, since they actually own the trademark, we do not forget IBM, Red Hat, VMware and all the other contributors to the project. Knative is already behind IBM Code Engine and Openshift serverless. Special tip of the hat for VMware that has done a lot of work for the project recently and is delivering Knative within its Cloud-Native Runtimes (CNR) for Tanzu Advanced.

Users rightly see CNCF, or any OSS foundation, as a guarantee that the project will not die due to a single vendor decision. Foundations give enterprises peace of mind in knowing that other people will pick up the development slack and that the software that they adopt will remain open source. In turn, this also brings a diverse community of developers and vendors to a project, which helps ensure its long term viability.

If the project is accepted to CNCF, its governance will actually not change. CNCF does not mandate a specific governance. Knative will continue operating with its steering and technical oversight committees and working groups. But clearly the big benefit will be increased confidence from users, other vendors, and startups. In my view, this lack of confidence in the independence of Knative has been the project’s biggest growth impediment.

Thank you Google for doing the right thing. Next time, just please do it sooner ;)

While you're here, have a look at how TriggerMesh supports Knative users.

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