Guest: Rahul Patwardhan (LinkedIn)
Company: Loft Labs (Twitter)

DevSpace is a developer tool created by Loft Labs, which aims to simplify Kubernetes development. Loft Labs has recently contributed the project to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to empower developers and to help move CNCF’s mission to make cloud-native computing ubiquitous forward.

In this episode of TFiR: Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Rahul Patwardhan, Head of Growth Marketing at Loft Labs, to discuss their contribution of DevSpace to CNCF. He goes into detail about the significance of the project and what problem it solves for the ecosystem.

Key highlights from this video interview are:

• The CNCF Kubernetes ecosystem has over 50 tools; however, Patwardhan tells us that if you look at the CNCF Sandbox, there are very few that are properly contributed. He explains Loft Labs’ reasons for wanting to contribute to DevSpace, saying that they were attracted to CNCF’s mission of making cloud-native computing ubiquitous.
• One of Loft Labs’ key open-source projects is vcluster—the virtual clusters on top of Kubernetes, which means you do not have to deploy a lot of clusters from AWS or the service you are using, therefore increasing developer and cost efficiency.
• Patwardhan explains how DevSpace complements vcluster by enabling developers to configure the services or Kubernetes configuration with a single command, DevSpace.yaml. He explains the benefits this brings to developers and how it helps provide a good experience enabling them to develop quickly and remotely.
• DevSpace has been installed a million times and is used by 1000s of companies, and has 3,200 GitHub stars. The project predates vcluster and has had time to mature and get feedback from the developer community. Patwardhan discusses the key drivers to contributing DevSpace to CNCF. He also talks about how Loft Labs expects it to be used in production by enterprises.
• Patwardhan discusses they still want to be the main contributor for DevSpace and they have plans to release the next set of features and versions. He explains that they want to make sure that they help as many developers as they can with this contribution. He talks about the community around DevSpace.
• The Loft commercial product is made up of various open-source projects like vcluster, jsPolicy, and DevSpace. The product helps customers who are already using Kubernetes as well as those just getting started. Patwardhan explains that even though Loft Labs has a small team, they have a significant commercial aspect to the company.
• Patwardhan discusses where DevSpace fits in the wider ecosystem saying it provides a bridge between the platform stack or workloads and the deployment provider to help provide a good developer experience. He explains how it helps connect these different elements together such as automatic configuration, storage, and networking so that developers do not need to worry about it.
• The benefit of contributing DevSpace to CNCF is that they are helping move CNCF’s mission forward and that the feedback they receive from the community helps Loft Labs on their commercial side. Patwardhan talks about the benefits of having CNCF as a third-party, independent body.

The summary of the show is written by Emily Nicholls.