How the Kubernetes Community Celebrated Its 10th Anniversary
It’s been 10 years since an open source project from a scrappy team at Google burst onto the scene and became a global phenomenon. And last week, people celebrated all over the world.
Celebrated #Kubernetes 10th birthday with Mufasa in Serengeti.Missing the BayArea celebrations but this is pretty exotic! How are you celebrating #Kubertenes? pic.twitter.com/gwA2ugXSon
— Arun Gupta (@arungupta) June 6, 2024
Super excited to run the @kubernetesio 10-year celebration in Helsinki, and have a chance to chat with @jbeda about the past, present and future of Kubernetes! 🤩
Watch the chat here (around 50mins in): https://t.co/cxUpOKJbB6 https://t.co/mpCEXA0LM3
— Lucas Käldström (@kubernetesonarm) June 6, 2024
In many ways, the 10th anniversary of Kubernetes became a celebration of the community itself — of all the maintainers and contributors, the SIGs and developers advocates — and especially, all of the Kubernetes users around the world.
Hanging out with my family ♥️ #kubernetes 10th birthday pic.twitter.com/BeZtajGZo8
— Jaice (@jaicesd) June 7, 2024
All Over The World
Google‘s Kubernetes Podcast has been celebrating with a special four-part series, starting with Kubernetes maintainers active since the early days who are still involved today. (It was followed by an interview with Tim Hockin and Kelsey Hightower.) But last week the podcast’s two co-hosts said they were headed to big celebrations out in the larger Kubernetes community — one in Mountain View, California and one in Bergen, Norway.
Happy 10th birthday #kubernetes #kubertenes. @googlecloud pic.twitter.com/IgL3fgPprq
— Drew Bradstock (@dbradstock) June 7, 2024
Community celebrations had been happening all of last week, co-host Kaslin Fields pointed out. (“The first one started I think on June 1st…”) On Thursday nearly 100 people turned up for the London party by OpenUK, according to TNS reporter Jennifer Riggins (who heard this joke from Matt Barker, a vice president at Workload Identity Architecture. “Now recruiters can actually require 10 years experience in Kubernetes.”)
Happy tenth birthday Kubernetes 🎂 pic.twitter.com/5vGHrqLIOu
— Rohit Ghumare | That #DevOps Guy✍️ (@ghumare64) June 6, 2024
Happy birthday kubernetes! pic.twitter.com/SGvj1GL2P4
— Justin Cormack (@justincormack) June 6, 2024
And the parties were still continuing around the world on Monday. At a “birthday bash” in Denmark, Google senior cloud developer Abdel Sghiouar gave a talk on the Kubernetes Gateway API — while another birthday bash was celebrated in Oslo, Norway.
At the Oslo CNCF Meetup to talk about #spinkube and say happy birthday to #kubernetes!!! pic.twitter.com/ca42TxgGMm
— Mikkel Mørk Hegnhøj (@mikkelhegn) June 10, 2024
The festivities were still raging on this week, with two U.S. events — trivia, party favors, and “food and drink” in Arlington, Virginia, and in Boston a talk about the Gateway API from Google Kubernetes Engine product manager Spencer Bischof. Tuesday also saw a celebration in Brazil (“Kubernetes está completando 10 anos!“) with more events later in Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
設営中
特注ケーキのクオリティ高すぎてすごいです。
楽しみにしててください#k8sjp #Kubernetes pic.twitter.com/DfoD1QSAnt— MasayaAoyama（青山真也） ⎈ (@amsy810) June 6, 2024
It’s happening all over the world, with celebrations everywhere from Amsterdam to Tunisia, the country of Georgia, Israel, and four in India. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has a complete list of all the events…
Logo Wins a KubeCon Pass
It’s all proof that Kubernetes is a truly global phenomenon — and something special happened when the Linux Foundation invited community members to design a logo for Kubernetes’ 10-year anniversary. The winning entry came from a team at Florida-based cloud platform company Cuemby, lead by COO/co-founder Cristher Castro (also a CNCF ambassador.) But Castro is also co-founder of the nonprofit Fundación Hispana de Cloud Native, an educational group serving Latin America and Hispanic communities. “I’ve been part of this beautiful community since 2018 when we opened the meetup chapter in Medellin…” Castro told the CNCF in an interview. “My participation is more logistical and operational, but every role counts in a community.”
Their prize? A full-access conference pass for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. “I’m excited about CNCF announcing the first KubeDay in the region, which will occur in Medellin, Colombia, on October 9th, 2024,” Castro told the CNCF.
“The increasing adoption and active contribution to these technologies in emerging regions will have a profound and far-reaching impact on professionals and businesses…”
The winning logo was also featured on the home page of kubernetes.io
Say hello 👋 to the winning #Kubernetes 10-year anniversary logo!
The design by @CristherCastro and her team at Cuemby was selected from 30+ submissions!
Take a look at the logo and hear more from Crister about the design inspiration on the blog: https://t.co/cLpUbAbiWL pic.twitter.com/VeSg3PHTID
— CNCF (@CloudNativeFdn) June 6, 2024
Thanking Contributors
But community has always been a long-running theme for the project.
A bit of history that is left out of this post: Joe Beda presented the concepts that would become Kubernetes at Gluecon in May 2014. https://t.co/WfT0k3p9KU pic.twitter.com/amYCh1mU9o
— Defrag (@defrag) June 6, 2024
Even back in 2015, at the first KubeCon held in San Francisco, Brendan Burns said in his opening keynote that the thing that makes him most proud is “the number of people who’ve come together to submit code, to work on code, to send us issues, everything else that makes a community, that builds an ecosystem, that creates something that is more than just any one person or any one company, but a really amazing community that’s developing around a lot of really cool ideas.”
And in 2019 Joe Beda even contributed his own domain K8s.af for a quality-obsessed user’s collection of educational postmortems and other Kubernetes failure stories.
Happy Birthday, #Kubernetes 💙
Because of you being created, I’ve met some of the most incredible humans in the world whom I love dearly.
(Some people I couldn’t tag in the photos due to their settings 🥺) pic.twitter.com/R2IekEktRv
— Nanci Lancaster (@Microwavables) June 7, 2024
“There’s a whole league of these hidden contributors,” Kelsey Hightower reminded the audience at Friday’s Mountain View event (remembering that he once met someone with a Kubernetes tattoo).
Incredible 10th birthday celebration for #kubernetes at Google Bay View with the @CloudNativeFdn. Thanks to the entire community who made this possible. @googlecloud #kuber10es pic.twitter.com/cZHjGR7l3c
— Drew Bradstock (@dbradstock) June 7, 2024
Kubernetes now has over 88,000 contributors from more than 8,000 companies in 44 countries, according to 10-year anniversary post. (Plus 4,228,347 contributions.) There’s been 311,787 pull requests and 158,530 issues — and GitHub shows 38,700 forks. (They also show over 108,000 stars…)
Joe Beda’s contributor card for Kubernetes (2024)
Even the number of questions asked about Kubernetes on Stack Overflow has climbed to over 58,270…
So for the birthday bash in Mountain View, an online interface was created where 61,000 Kubernetes contributors could see and share their own personal Contributor Card, featuring the date of their first commit and all the years they’ve contributed. A Linux Foundation blog post called it “your passport to a world of recognition within the vibrant Kubernetes community” and “a token of gratitude… a tangible symbol of your dedication and expertise in shaping the future of cloud native technology.”
But expressions of community appreciation have also been appearing spontaneously around the web…
While not perfect, Kubernetes has fostered an incredible community that has developed through excitement, struggles, and ultimately, collaboration and improvement.
I’m immensely proud to be part of it.
Thank you, #Kubernetes, and happiest 10th birthday to you! 🎂💙#KuberTENes pic.twitter.com/pEQGEIYvOz— 🐝 🏳️🌈Carla 🏳️⚧️Gaggini🇯🇵🐝 (@CarlaAtGG) June 6, 2024
One especially heartfelt tribute came from blog post from software engineer Michelle Noorali, who among other things was a Kubernetes Steering Committee member from 2018-2019 and a developer representative on the CNCF Governing Board from 2017-2021 — and is also a SpinKube maintainer. “I’m especially thankful for the focus on collaboration and community,” Noorali wrote, “and for the technology that remains aflame a decade later.”
yall. #kubernetes changed my life forever. i’m so thankful to the early founders and members of the community for being so intentional with the values and the organizational design. so exquisite, so beautiful. the secret sauce if you ask me. #kuberTENes forevaaaaa pic.twitter.com/awlVpuYdc0
— @paris@hachyderm.io (@ParisInBmore) June 7, 2024
And Craig McLuckie even crafted a commemorative blog post titled “All I really need to know I learned from co-founding Kubernetes,” which includes lessons like “Find strength in diversity.”
“I strongly encourage folks to avoid the trap of self-replication in building teams. Sure, replicating strengths can be good — but you will be better off if you have a team with relatively non-overlapping superpowers.”
The View From Mountain View
Double the celebration! 10 years of Kubernetes & @thockin‘s 20th at Google! 🎂🎉 pic.twitter.com/C0ibDKIRhf
— Janet Kuo 👩🏻💻☁️ (@janet_kuo) June 5, 2024
A lot happened over the last 10 years. Among the speakers at Mountain View was Kit Merker, a former Google product manager for Kubernetes, who drew some knowing laughter when he appeared on the stage wearing a pair of Google Glasses. “In 2014 Google launched two products that were destined to change the trajectory of how we do computing for the rest of time,” he joked. “We’re here to celebrate one of those products….”
But hundreds of Kubernetes enthusiasts had packed the audience, and by the end of the three-and-a-half-hour presentation, Sarah Novotny was ready for some community networking. “(You’ve heard the whole of the history and the fun stories of the community and the project,” Novotny told the audience, adding “and now there’s cake!”)
So proud to see the release teams on stage during @cra‘s presentation at the #Kubertenetes 10 year bash. Me and @PuDiJoglekar are lucky to be sitting with one the best release team leads 🤗 pic.twitter.com/72IDtEV8kK
— puerco (@puerco) June 7, 2024
In a post Friday on LinkedIn, longtime Google staff software engineer Janet Kuo wrote that it was an honor to take the stage in front of an appreciative audience at the event. “It’s been a privilege to witness the growth and impact of Kubernetes over the years, and I’m excited to see what the next decade holds.”
Woohoo! I just spotted my name among the top 50 #Kubernetes contributors at #KuberTENes.
🤯 I never expected that! pic.twitter.com/5KV67QdBlO— Manuel Alejandro de Brito Fontes (@aledbf) June 7, 2024
But even as the celebrations were happening, the project was continuing to evolve. Last month Kubernetes finished removing all its built-in cloud provider integrations (1.5 million lines of code), migrating them all to external plugins while reducing core-component binary sizes by 40%.
And last week Joe Beda turned up in a CNCF video with the perfect quote:
“The future is yet to be written.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ__Pec5pyo
As Brendan Burns said in 2019, “Thank you to everyone who has enabled us to get this far, and thanks to everyone who will take us further.”
Or, as the Kubernetes blog puts it, “The next 10 years of Kubernetes will be guided by its users and the ecosystem, but most of all, by the people who contribute to it.”
