What a year it has been! Although it feels like we have been here for an eternity, it was at the KubeCon 2025 that we announced the launch of the NeoNephos Foundation. By the end of 2025, we have grown to 15 members, with seven of them only joining within the last 6 months. Let us recap this year by looking at key moments that have shaped our foundation:
The year started off strong with our foundation launch announcement at the KubeCon 2025. Set on a grand stage flanked by thousands, we introduced the world to our vision of “Making Cloud Native Sovereign”. At our corresponding booth, at that time with Gardener branding, we noticed great interest in our foundation with 200+ people willing to have their badges scanned for follow-up information.
All Committees formed
NeoNephos is formally organized into a strategic Governing Board, the Technical Advisory Council and the Technical Steering Committees of each project. Since we launched with 11 projects, this means 13 organizational bodies had to be established. This was a huge undertaking because for many it was the first time they had worked in such a manner. Nevertheless, we persisted. By July we had already formed all committees and established a working mode.
Open Resource Discovery API Award
It is always worthwhile to revisit the individual accomplishments of our projects, and Open Resource Discovery winning the API Award in the API Standards & Specifications category in August is definitely among them. For us, it is a reminder of the strength of the projects which shape the NeoNephos portfolio.
Gardener Reaches CNCF AI Compliance
Each of our projects has enterprise readiness in mind. Therefore, gaining and keeping trust is important. We are proud to mention that Gardener is one of the first Kubernetes offerings which has reached the brand new CNCF Certified Kubernetes AI Conformance. Integrating with de-facto standards and community programs shows our commitment for integration within the wider cloud-native ecosystem. We will continue to push our projects to adhere to state-of-the-art conformance programs, as applicable.
Platform Mesh Releases
The year kept going strong with several releases of our Platform Mesh project. This starts by the release of the Getting Started guide, which includes a step-by-step introduction into the project and its components, complete with a local Platform Mesh docker environment. Additionally, the project released version 0.1.0, of course packaged via our Open Component Model project.
NeoNephos joins Zulip
The foundation and its projects needed an organized team chat, suitable for synchronous and asynchronous communication. Zulip was the perfect candidate as it was hosted and endorsed by the Linux Foundation itself. While the start was slow, it is seeing more and more usage. Help out by joining our Zulip today and shape with us the future of cloud native sovereignty!
Project Lifecycle Police Approved
The year culminated with the approval of a very special document. The project lifecycle policy rules how projects can join the foundation, and the overall roles, responsibilities and benefits a project has with respect to NeoNephos. This is a topic which has led to healthy discussions due to its importance for the foundation as a whole. Nevertheless, we are now in the finish line, having a first version approved by our Governing Board. We are grateful for the continuous feedback we have received from the committee members, the projects, and the Linux Foundation itself during this time. We look forward to unveiling this document to the public soon!
This closes down our highlights for 2025. Overall, we are well positioned for 2026 and look ahead with great excitement. We wish you a happy holiday and can’t wait for you to come back next year, because we are just getting started!