Migrate the project to CNFC

[bhack]

What is the current status of the evaluation to migrate the project to CNCF (See https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/skaffold/issues/2492#issuecomment-2032998685)

Google Kaniko is trying to do the same in the CNCF sandbox process

/cc @bendory

[bendory]

We haven't heard strong community interest / support for such a migration, and to successfully migrate to CNCF we'll need strong support beyond the Google team that currently provides most of the Skaffold work.

If you (@bhack or anyone else who sees this issue) is interested in stepping up in support of this, please raise your hand on this issue! Given community support, we would be in favor of such a donation.

[bhack]

Can you expose what it will be the alternative if we cannot migrate to CNCF?

[bendory]

the alternative is likely to be exactly what it is today:

• release cadence will continue
• Google team will implement features of interest to us
• we are unlikely to accept extensive changes from PRs unless we know the contributor has a commitment to maintaining them -- or in other words, we are unlikely to take on additional maintenance load in our team
• if priorities for our team shift, our level of support and engagement may change -- and absent community participation or ownership of Skaffold, our team becomes a single point of failure which puts the product at risk

For the long-term health of Skaffold, we would very much like to see a level of community contribution, participation, and ownership that makes Skaffold an OSS community project rather than an OSS project provided by Google. We are happy to donate (to an appropriate OSS community foundation) the assets that constitute existing Skaffold. (Note: we would need to go through internal processes to get approvals for said donation, so please don't read this as a "guarantee".)

[bhack]

Are you in contact with other business partners to support CNFC sandbox? I suppose that it could be a better path to explore to sustain this migration other then individual sparse contributors.

I don't know if I remember but it seems that the Skaffold domain is still not strictly covered by any other CNFC project so I suppose that it could be not hard to find other business partner.