[Incubation] Podman Container Tools Incubation Application

[actionmancan]

Podman - CNCF Incubation Application

Application for Incubation: Sandbox Application #309

This document tracks Podman's progress toward CNCF Incubation and provides evidence for each requirement.

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Application Process Principles

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Engage with domain specific TAG	✅	TAG-Runtime Meeting Notes - Completed TAG walkthrough presentation
TAG provides insight/recommendation in context of landscape	✅	TAG-Runtime Meeting Notes - TAG provided feedback during review
All project metadata and resources are vendor neutral	✅	Project hosted under github.com/containers organization with multi-vendor governance
Review and ack expectations for Sandbox	✅	Sandbox acceptance
Due Diligence Review	⏳	Pending TOC assignment
Additional docs as appropriate	⏳	In progress

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Governance

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Clear and discoverable governance documentation	✅	GOVERNANCE.md
Document complete list of current maintainers	✅	MAINTAINERS file with names, contact info, and affiliations
Appropriate number of active maintainers	✅	Contributors Graph - 798+ contributors, multi-company maintainer team
Code and Doc ownership matches governance roles	✅	CODEOWNERS aligned with MAINTAINERS
Document adoption of CNCF Code of Conduct	✅	CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md references CNCF CoC
CNCF Code of Conduct cross-linked from governance docs	✅	Cross-linked in CONTRIBUTING.md and README
All subprojects listed	✅	Subprojects documented: Podman Desktop, Buildah, Skopeo, crun

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Contributors

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Clearly defined process to submit issues or changes	✅	CONTRIBUTING.md, Submitting Issues & PRs
At least one public communications channel	✅	Matrix (#podman:matrix.org), Discord, IRC (#podman on libera.chat), GitHub Discussions
List all project communication channels	✅	Community page - Matrix, Discord, IRC, GitHub Discussions, Mailing List
Up-to-date public meeting schedules	✅	Podman Community Meetings - Regular Community Meeting & Cabal with recordings and minutes
Documentation of how to contribute	✅	CONTRIBUTING.md, PR Submission Details
Demonstrate contributor activity and recruitment	✅	Contribution Stats, DevStats, contributors from Red Hat, SUSE, Amadeus, Motorola Solutions, NTT, IBM, Debian

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Engineering Principles

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Document project goals and differentiation	✅	README - Why Podman? - Daemonless, rootless containers differentiating from Docker
Document what the project does and why	✅	Podman.io Documentation, Getting Started Guide
Public roadmap or forward-looking planning	✅	GitHub Projects Board, Release Planning
Overview of project architecture	✅	Architecture Documentation, Cloud Native Use Cases
Document the release process	✅	Release Process, Release Notes

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Security

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Clearly defined process to report security issues	✅	SECURITY.md
Enforcing Access Control Rules	✅	Branch protection rules - 2FA required, signed commits, review requirements
Document security response roles	✅	Security Policy documents security team and response process
Security Self-Assessment	✅	Podman Security Self-Assessment
OpenSSF Best Practices passing badge	✅	OpenSSF Best Practices Badge - 100% compliance

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Ecosystem

Requirement	Status	Evidence
Publicly documented list of adopters	✅	ADOPTERS.md
Used by at least 3 independent adopters	✅	Notable adopters include: Red Hat (OpenShift/RHEL), SUSE, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, multiple enterprise users
TOC verification of adopters	⏳	Pending TOC review
Documented integrations with CNCF projects	✅	Kubernetes CRI-O integration, Prometheus metrics, OCI/containerd compatibility

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Additional Evidence

Community Health Metrics

• GitHub Stars: 29,900+
• Forks: 2,900+
• Contributors: 798+
• Commits: 26,377+
• Releases: 233
• Used By: 170+ organizations including UiPath, OpenShift, DataDog

Production Usage

• Default container runtime in RHEL 8+, Fedora, CentOS Stream
• Integrated in GitHub Actions and GitLab CI runners
• Used by major cloud providers for serverless container workloads

Vendor Diversity

Contributors from multiple organizations including:

• Red Hat
• SUSE
• Amadeus
• Motorola Solutions
• NTT
• IBM
• Debian

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References

• Project Website: https://podman.io
• Main Repository: https://github.com/containers/podman
• Documentation: https://podman.io/docs
• CNCF Sandbox Application: Sandbox Application #309
• CNCF DevStats: https://podman.devstats.cncf.io/
• CNCF Project Lifecycle: https://contribute.cncf.io/projects/lifecycle/
• OpenSSF Badge: OpenSSF Best Practices
• Security Self-Assessment: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/projects/podman-containers/security-assessment/self-assessment.md

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Last Updated: December 2025