The Continuous Delivery Foundation - what will it bring to DevOps?

Why now - and where is CI? CloudBees, Puppet and Sumo Logic explain the need for yet another open source foundation

Earlier this month, yet another open source foundation opened its doors. The Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF) will operate under the auspices of the Linux Foundation with a focus on fostering best practice and recognised specifications within the CI/CD pipeline.

The open-source projects initially supported by the CDF are pipeline automation platform Jenkins, the Kubernetes-based version Jenkins X, multi-cloud continuous deivery platform Spinnaker and Google's Tekton CI/CD framework, with the aim being to add more as the pace picks up.

Premier members of CDF are listed as CapitalOne, CircleCI, Google, CloudBees, Huawei, JFrog, IBM and Netflix, while General members include Alibaba Cloud, Atos, Autodesk, SAP, Puppet and Sumo Logic.

Three of those vendors, CloudBees - the project's prime mover - Puppet and Sumo Logic, told Computing about some of the potential plus points of CDF. But first, where is continuous integration in all this? Aren't CI and CD joined at the hip?

"Continuous delivery is inclusive of CI and continuous deployment," explained director of the open source community at CloudBees, Tracy Miranda. "The name reflects the fact we want to stay focused on the outcomes to our users, which is releasing software reliably, quickly and safely. Also, CD.foundation is an excellent domain name!"

There are already a number of open-source foundations in this area, including the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and some might feel the space is getting a little crowded. But Kohsuke Kawaguchi, creator Jenkins and CTO of CloudBees, argues that the centrality and "rising importance" of CD in software development means it merits its own collective.

"From CloudBees' perspective, many of our customers rely on thriving open-source ecosystem for multi-cloud DevOps strategy, and the CDF helps that goal," he said. "When the whole CD ecosystem collaborates, CD gets easier to adopt for everyone. That's a clear win."

On the tools front CI/CD is characterised by a plethora of projects and point solutions, and some unification - or at least standardisation - would be welcomed by many. So, is this the beginning of the long-expected consolidation of the DevOps toolchain? Not really, said John Coyle, VP of business development at Sumo Logic, whose machine data analytics solution is not open source.

"There will definitely be some consolidation across the DevOps tool chain, but it will be more a rationalisation of tools as customers continue to demand best of breed solutions at each stage of the pipeline," he said. "The key will be stitching these open source and commercial tools together to provide the greatest value".

As a member of CDF, Sumo Logic hopes to be able to take an active role in supporting the growth and evolution of CI/CD as well supporting existing and up-and-coming solutions that are shaping the way software is developed, said Coyle.

"One of the biggest benefits of being part of the CDF from our perspective is the opportunity to contribute to the community by providing best practices and exchanging ideas on how machine data analytics can improve visibility, and speed application development and deployment within modern software delivery life cycles."

For Puppet, CTO Deepak Giridharagopal commented: "Continuous delivery is concerned with automating that bigger-picture problem, getting teams to a place where they can quickly, cheaply, and reliably deliver their software at any time. That's why we're excited to join the Continuous Delivery Foundation.

Giridharagopal continued: "There is ample opportunity to get better continuous delivery tools in the hands of more people, more quickly. We believe the CDF will help cultivate more openness, cooperation, and reuse between members and the larger community."

Some CDF members are end users rather than vendors (although as every company becomes a software company - to use the cliché - distinctions are blurring). Miranda asserts that membership can help such businesses attract the best developers as well as influencing the development of the tools they use. She explained that CDF plans to create specific working groups focused on sectors such as finance, embedded software and higher education to help end-user members get the most out of CDF.

"We know companies value being part of this both for being seen as thought leaders as well as collaborating with others to solve their own problems and empower their teams to adopt best practices," Miranda said.

If CDF is about standardisation, at least in part, which standards will it be pursuing? That depends on the members, said Kawaguchi.

"Tekton [a project providing Kubernetes-style declarative resources for CI/CD-pipelines] is one of the standard/interop-focused technology that joined the CDF from the beginning. What else gets worked on is entirely up to the community, and personally I hope projects like Grafeas [pipeline metadata management tool] join the CDF. One of the areas where the open-source tools were weak at is exchanging information without involving developers."

Kawaguchi refused to be drawn on who would ultimately chair the foundation or on prospective new members. "I think it'll be determined pretty soon, but until then I don't want to spread wrong information," he said.

Note: This article was amended to include the comment from Puppet.