I expect there are many people in this thread that lack some context. So, I figured I'd try to add some. If someone has more to add or a correction please do so. These are intermixed with some of my personal opinions, of course.

There are two things about this that jump out to me.

First, kind, k3s, and minikube are different in ways that are important to those who use them. Those subtle differences matter. This happens with other distros, too.

kind was developed with Kubernetes test infrastructure automation in mind. In fact, the docs say "kind was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development or CI.". Minikube, which has been around a lot longer, targets Kubernetes application developers. Their docs note, "minikube's primary goals are to be the best tool for local Kubernetes application development and to support all Kubernetes features that fit."

This distinction is important as we see people performing different roles. Tools for those different roles will likely look different in the end.

k3s targets a different group from these other two. Their docs note, "The certified Kubernetes distribution built for IoT & Edge computing". This is a different situation from the other two and I would expect the experiencing of using it to look different.

It may feel the same on the surface but the subtle goals are going to lead it in some different directions. Those are good as one size does not fit all.

Second, while minikube and kind are k8s sub-projects that doesn't mean all distros that fall under the CNCF need to be. kind you would expect to be be part of the kubernetes project because it was developed with testing kubernetes itself in mind. If minikube were started today it may have been something entirely separate from the kubernetes project. Over the years we have had discussions and debates on this theoretical topic.

The idea that all of these things must or should be part of the Kubernetes project doesn't fit with the discussions the k8s community has had over the years. In fact, people come to Kubernetes with ideas for changes and we regularly tell them to do them as part a different project rather than in k8s.

I'm surprised to see a push for distros that are open source to be part of the k8s project if they are to be in the CNCF.

I would prefer to see diversity over consistency. If a distribution is conformant (we have tests for that) there should be room for diversity in the way things are done. Sometimes this will be experiments. Sometimes that will mean one distro is not consistent with another. For example, some distros ship with CRDs pre-installed which means an extended API. Sometimes that will mean someone swapped out a component with another version that uses the same APIs.

The sandbox is a great please to experiment in a cross company way.

The k8s community is amazingly busy. The people are busy. I wouldn't want to put more on their plates but rather take it off. Enabling groups to operate autonomously from each other or in a loosely coupled manner helps with that. Sub-projects of Kubernetes are limited in their ability to do that. A product of Kubernetes trying to efficiently handle the scale of people and decisions.

Being a separate CNCF project enables a loose coupling. It doesn't add work to an overworked k8s community but enables collaboration. This is an often overlooked element.

Open source projects aren't companies that fall along nice divisional lines. They are far more organic while variance in people, process, and ideas flourish. A fertile place for that is important.

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020, at 5:06 AM, Saad Ali via lists.cncf.io wrote: