Open Container Initiative Introduces Distribution Specification Project

The Open Container Initiative (OCI) is a project underneath The Linux Foundation umbrella. They recently announced the launch of a Distribution Specification project to standardize container image distribution. The standardization is based on Docker Registry HTTP API V2 protocol.

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The benefit of the Docker Registry HTTP API V2 protocol is its support of pushing and pulling container images. Containers are so popular because of their simplicity. This project will “ensure interoperability throughout the cloud-native and container ecosystem.”

Chris Aniszczyk, executive director of OCI, stated “With the booming development in container and cloud-native technologies, the community needs a reliable industry standard for distribution to allow for increased interoperability along with a neutral home to evolve the specification… OCI contributors and maintainers have been hard at work to collaboratively drive the adoption of specifications for the container standards community and will start the journey for container distribution.”

OCI is made up of members from companies like Docker, Red Hat, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Microsoft, etc. The announcement post has quotes from people from these companies.

Red Hat’s Vincent Batts stated, “Now that the OCI image and runtime specifications have reached v1.0, it is time to collaborate on developing the OCI specification for distributing those images… Building on existing industry experience and contributions from the community, we look forward to a distribution standard to complement our ability to create and launch standard OCI images.”

One of the greatest benefits of OCI and containers is the increased collaboration. Batts recognizes this and so does the rest of the container community. This move by OCI increases the potential of containers and allows companies to use them with ease.

We encourage you to read the full release.