# Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is a vendor-neutral organization that hosts and nurtures open-source projects for cloud-native computing. Founded in 2015 as part of the Linux Foundation, CNCF was created to steward Kubernetes after Google donated it, and has since grown to host over 150 projects across the cloud-native ecosystem. Projects follow a maturity model: Sandbox (early stage, experimental), Incubating (growing adoption, production use), and Graduated (proven, widely adopted, stable governance). Graduated projects include Kubernetes, [[containerd]], Prometheus, Envoy, Helm, and etcd—foundational technologies that power most modern cloud infrastructure. This tiered system helps organizations assess project maturity and risk. Beyond hosting code, CNCF defines what "cloud native" means: [[Containerization]], microservices, service meshes, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs. They maintain the Cloud Native Landscape—a map of the overwhelming number of tools in this space—and run KubeCon, the largest open-source conference. CNCF serves as neutral ground where competing vendors collaborate on shared infrastructure. ## Related - [[containerd]] - [[Kubernetes]] - [[Containerization]] - [[Open Source]] ## References - https://www.cncf.io/ - https://landscape.cncf.io/