OCI
also: Open Container Initiative
OCI (Open Container Initiative) is an open standard for defining container image format and runtime specifications, ensuring portability across different container platforms.
The Open Container Initiative is a Linux Foundation project that maintains open standards for containerization. It defines how container images should be structured and how container runtimes should execute them, removing vendor lock-in and promoting interoperability.
OCI consists of two main specifications: the Image Specification (defines the container image format and layers) and the Runtime Specification (defines how to run a container from an image). For example, Docker images comply with OCI standards, allowing them to run on alternative runtimes like containerd, cri-o, or runc.
This standardization means a container image built once can run consistently across different container platforms and orchestrators like Kubernetes, without modification.