In March 2016, the first-ever KubeCon Europe took place in London, England. Pre-event press from that year anticipated “hundreds” of attendees: Kubernetes was starting to grab the attention of the developer world, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation community was still a niche group of open-source devotees.

Today’s ecosystem is very different. Kubernetes has spread open source into the enterprise as it moves beyond its hype cycle into mainstream use. In response, corporate end users such Audi, Boeing, Mercedes-Benz, Mastercard, IBM and JP Morgan Chase have become active members of the CNCF ecosystem.

“Why the CNCF works so well is the fact that it’s a safe place for all these companies to come together, even companies of competing products, having that common vision of … ‘Can we work together to create all these things to get rid of our administrivia or maintenance tasks?’” said Taylor Dolezal (pictured), head of ecosystem at the CNCF.

Dolezal spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Keith Townsend at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what it means to be a member of the CNCF ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.)

It’s ‘All for one, and one for all!’ in the CNCF ecosystem

The CNCF offers companies a primer to open-source adoption, offering tips, tricks and playbooks for how they can accomplish their cloud-native goals, according to Dolezal. But when new members ask him to recommend architectures or provide them with blueprints on how to do things, he has to explain that’s not the way the CNCF works.

“We don’t want to be the kingmaker and be ‘This is the only way forward,'” he said. “We want to be inclusive; we want to pull in these projects and kind of give everyone the same bootstrap and springboard off of that — create a nice base for everybody to get started with and then see what works out [and] learn from one another.”

Even when it comes to creating and monitoring standards for Kubernetes, community input is essential. The role of the CNCF leadership isn’t to create rules, but to gather the right people together and facilitate the conversation, according to Dolezal.

“The groups that are running the Open Container interface, Container Storage Interface, all of those things that we’ve agreed on as ways to implement those technologies … we help foster those communities and those conversations [by] asking, “Does this work for you? If not, let’s talk about it; let’s figure out why it might not,” he said.

Every project, from the newest sandbox to graduated and widely adopted CNCF projects, such as Kubernetes and Prometheus, are the product of community collaboration. And every single contribution counts, whether it’s a critical line of code or deleting a misplaced comma in the user guide, according to Dolezal.

“We’re the people that build the tools, and we need help no matter how big or small. When you come in and join the community, you don’t have to rewrite the Kubernetes scheduler. You can help make documentation that much more easy to understand, and in doing so, help thousands of people,” he said. “I think a lot of people miss that. Even just changing punctuation can have such a giant difference.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event. Neither the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, the sponsor for this segment, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE