Open Container Initiative Distribution Specification Reaches Version 1.0

SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Container Initiative (OCI), an open source community for creating open standards around containers, today announced that the Open Container Initiative Distribution Specification (OCI Distribution Spec) has reached version 1.0.0.

The OCI Distribution Spec defines an API protocol to facilitate and standardize the distribution of content. It was launched in April 2018 to standardize container image distribution around the specification for the Docker Registry HTTP API V2 protocol, which supports the pushing and pulling of container images.

"The OCI distribution spec brings our community full circle, standardizing the core operations that users of containers have come to depend on," said Phil Estes, chair of the Open Container Initiative (OCI) Technical Oversight Board. "The runtime spec helped us define a container and how it runs; the image spec gave us a way to package that into a container image. Both of these were significant milestones from the original OCI charter, and finalizing the OCI distribution spec today gives us a standard way to distribute images via registries and runtime tools. I'm really happy to see the collaboration that has brought the OCI and broader container industry to this point!"

"In the years since we built the Docker Registry protocol, there has been an explosion of usage in container images, driven by the standards-focused OCI community.," said Justin Cormack, CTO of Docker. "With our contribution of the Distribution reference implementation to CNCF and v1.0 of the OCI Distribution Spec, marks a milestone for the community."

"Reaching v1.0 means the OCI Distribution Spec is stable and ready to serve as the baseline for the distribution of container images across platforms," said Chris Aniszczyk, Executive Director of OCI. "Having it as the common distribution specification, paired with conformance testing, will ensure interoperability throughout the cloud native and container ecosystem, and beyond."

The OCI Distribution Spec aligns closely with the OCI Image Format Specification project, the OCI Runtime Specification project, and the OCI Artifacts project.

About the Open Container Initiative (OCI)
The Open Container Initiative is an open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtime. Projects associated with the Open Container Initiative can be found at https://github.com/opencontainers. Learn more about joining the OCI community here: https://www.opencontainers.org/community

The Open Container Initiative is a Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation Collaborative Projects are independently funded software projects that harness the power of collaborative development to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems. www.linuxfoundation.org

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