Google Gifts CNCF $3M Holiday Bonus

Google forked over a $3 million holiday present to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that builds on a past commitment and could further smooth over what has been a tense year between the two organizations. Google forked over a $3 million holiday present to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) that builds on a past commitment and could further smooth over what has been a tense year between the two organizations. The Google gift is in the form of cloud credits that CNCF can use to help its efforts in fostering the open source community, and specifically the Kubernetes-based ecosystem. The donation builds on a three-year, $9 million grant Google pledged in 2018 as part of handing over operating control of the Kubernetes project. Google stated in a blog post that the “annual donation” of “credits will help ensure the long-term health, quality, and stability of Kubernetes and its ecosystem.” A Google spokesman confirmed to SDxCentral that the donation would be in addition to the previous grant that it made at the Open Source Summit event in 2018. The credits are used by CNCF for testing and infrastructure for the Kubernetes project that all runs on Google Cloud. Google noted that it supports 100 million container downloads per day, and that each month more than 2,300 pull requests to the project trigger around 400,000 integration test runs that take up more than 300,000 core hours. While Google turned over control of the Kubernetes project to CNCF more than two years ago, it remains the largest single organizational contributor to the project. That could be expected as the container orchestration platform was donated by Google to CNCF, having emerged from Google’s internal Borg project. CNCF noted that the Kubernetes project has more than 34,305 contributors and more than 96,000 commits on GitHub. The project earlier this month released the latest 1.20 iteration of the platform, which was the third and final release of 2020. The 1.20 update included 42 total “enhancements” spread among various graduation levels with most of those as new updates moved to “alpha” status that the project said showed that the “Kubernetes innovation cycle is still trending upward.” Google’s latest donation was also peppered with wording that highlighted the cloud giant’s “long-standing commitment to Kubernetes and CNCF.” That wording is important as the relationship appeared to have become strained earlier this year when Google did not move its Istio service mesh project into the CNCF as expected. Instead of that expected move, Google formed the Open Usage Commons (OUC) group to house Istio, which had become a leading service mesh platform. That decision bewildered many, including those that helped Google develop the Istio project. “At the project’s inception, there was an agreement that the project would be contributed to the CNCF when it was mature,” wrote Jason McGee, VP and CTO of IBM’s Cloud Platform, in a blog post on the move. “IBM continues to believe that the best way to manage key open source projects such as Istio is with true open governance, under the auspices of a reputable organization with a level playing field for all contributors, transparency for users, and vendor-neutral management of the license and trademarks. Google should reconsider their original commitment and bring Istio to the CNCF.” As part of Istio announcement, Google said it made the move as a way to protect the trademark of open source projects, which it hinted has been a challenge for open source groups. “The scale and tenure of Google’s open source participation has taught us what works well, what doesn’t, and where the corner cases are that challenge projects,” Chris DiBona, director for open source at Google, noted in a blog post on the news. “One of the places we’ve historically seen projects stumble is in managing their trademarks – their project’s name and logo.” In a follow up email with SDxCentral, DiBona attempted to quell any perceived slight that may have been interpreted by the move. “Foundations do great work and the OUC is not trying to be a foundation like these, running conferences, etc.,” DiBona noted. “The launching of the Open Usage Commons should have no more impact on Google’s relationship with the CNCF than on any other group it funds and participates in.” CNCF for its part also attempted to downplay any perceived controversy. “Of course we were always expecting them to join and we still welcome them with open arms because this is about innovation and working together for the greater good,” CNCF Director Priyanka Sharma told SDxCentral in an interview about the group’s view of Istio’s direction. “I think at the end of the day, though, every company has to do what makes sense for them and what they want to do with their project. They’ve chosen to retain control of it and keep it. I don’t necessarily think that’s open source anymore or at least in the spirit of it. It’s more like source available maybe or open core.”