The Open Container Initiative unveiled today the OCI Runtime Specification v1.3 update for this standard around operating system process and application containers. This runtime specification continues to evolve for outlining the configuration, execution environment, and lifecycle of a container. Notable with the v1.3 revision is introducing official FreeBSD support.

The OCI Runtime Specification has defined platforms around Linux, Solaris, Windows, VM, and z/OS while new to the v1.3 specification is FreeBSD.

FreeBSD developers and the FreeBSD Foundation are understandably ecstatic around reaching this milestone. The FreeBSD Foundation wrote in their announcement over the OCI Runtime v1.3 spec release:

“This inclusion in the OCI runtime spec represents a watershed moment for FreeBSD, solidifying its position as a first-class platform for modern cloud-native workloads. Official OCI support means that FreeBSD users can now leverage the full ecosystem of container tools and orchestration platforms with confidence, knowing they’re working with a standardized, vendor-neutral specification. For organizations already running FreeBSD in production, this opens doors to containerized application deployment strategies that align with industry standards, making FreeBSD an even more compelling choice for cloud infrastructure, edge computing, and enterprise deployments.”

This effort has been years in the making for FreeBSD with working on OCI runtimes for FreeBSD to FreeBSD 14.2 and later providing official OCI images as well as making them available via Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry.

More details on the FreeBSD support and other additions to the v1.3 specification can be found via GitHub.