Linux distribution provider CoreOS, Inc. has taken the battle for a Linux container standard in a new direction by spinning off its App Container Spec (appc) project into a separate foundation.

CoreOS launched its own App Container back in 2014 in what was described by some as the beginning of “the container wars” after it fell out with Docker, Inc. At the time it claimed its motivation was due in part to Docker having “a broken security model.”

Supporting the new foundation are Google, VMware, Red Hat and Apcera, and “community maintainers” for the project have been appointed: Twitter, Inc.’s Charles Aylward, Red Hat, Inc.’s Vincent Batts and Google’s Tim Hockins.

Indepent from CoreOS

“Appc is a spec that now has its own name space and a governance structure that makes it independent from CoreOS,” CoreOS Product Manager Kelsey Hightower told Data Center Knowledge. “That group of people will push the standard forward … we won’t be controlling the standard.”

Hightower continued by noting that CoreOS wasn’t going to abandon support for Docker, as appc isn’t the same.

“You can’t really do an apples-to-apples comparison between Docker and appc since Docker doesn’t necessarily have a container standard,” he said.

In addition to the spin-off of appc, Apcera, Inc. announced its own appc implementation named Kurma. The implementation is said to be an execution environment for running applications in containers and provides a framework that allows containers to be managed and orchestrated.

Google also announced at the same time that support for appc is arriving in the Kubernetes project, via the integration of rkt as a configurable container runtime for Kubernetes clusters.

“The first implementation of the appc specification into Kubernetes, through the support of CoreOS rkt, is an important milestone for the Kubernetes project,” said Craig McLuckie, product manager and Kubernetes co-founder at Google in a statement. “Designed with cluster first management in mind, appc support enables developers to use their preferred container image through the same Google infrastructure inspired orchestration framework.”

Pick a side

The announcement of the appc spin-off and support from various companies definitely sees another escalation in the container wars, although Google’s involvement isn’t new: It participated in a $20 million Series A round in CoreOS back in April.

Docker isn’t going anywhere, and it can be fairly credited with bringing containerization to the mainstream, but competition in any market is always a good thing.

It is still early days for appc, but with today’s announcement the future does appear to be looking bright.

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