Google is handing over operational control of the open-source Kubernetes project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) with a $9 million grant of Google Cloud Platform credits.

These credits will be divided over three years, to cover the infrastructure costs associated with Kubernetes development and distribution, such as running the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and providing the container image download repository, the Foundation said.

With this move, CNCF and Kubernetes community members will take ownership of all day-to-day Kubernetes project operations.

Here’s what their responsibilities will be like:
• Operational tasks for the development of Kubernetes such as testing and builds
• Maintenance and operations for the distribution of Kubernetes.

According to CNCF, the Google Cloud credit grant will primarily be dedicated to funding scalability testing and maintenance of the infrastructure required to run Kubernetes development, ensuring that the project continues to be battle-tested and enterprise-ready.

“Kubernetes, the container orchestrator created and open-sourced here at Google, has experienced incredible development and adoption since it was introduced in 2014. Today, a reported 54% of Fortune 100 businesses use Kubernetes in some capacity and developers have made nearly a million comments made on the project in GitHub,” Google said in a blog post.

Google, in 2015, contributed the project to the then newly formed CNCF to help facilitate project management and develop an open community of contributors.

Dan Kohn, executive director of CNCF, added: “Google Cloud’s generous contribution is an important step in empowering the Kubernetes community to take ownership of its management and sustainability – all for the benefit of the project’s ever-growing user base.”

Global organizations like Ancestry, Blackrock, BlaBlaCar, Bloomberg, Buffer, Comcast, eBay, Goldman Sachs, GolfNow, ING, JD.com, Lyft, Nordstrom, Pearson, Pinterest, Sling TV, Squarespace, Ticketmaster, The New York Times, Uber, and many more use Kubernetes in production at massive scale.