Linkerd Stewards: free birds build new nest for service mesh

The maintainers of Linkerd, a lightweight service mesh have announced the creation of the Linkerd Steering Committee. 

As TechTarget reminds us, a service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer that controls service-to-service communication over a network. It provides a method in which separate parts of an application can communicate with each other. 

In terms of usage, service meshes appear commonly in concert with cloud-based applications, containers and microservices.

In the case of Linkerd, the committee will expand Linkerd’s stewardship to its end user community with the aim of reinforcing the project’s commitment to open governance and a user-centric roadmap. 

Linkerd is an ultralight, security-first service mesh for Kubernetes that enjoys open source and open governance. 

Created in 2016, Linkerd was the first service mesh project and (the team behind it claim that it) introduced the term ‘service mesh’ to the industry lexicon. 

Linkerd fans talk of its recent positive growth, converts include Microsoft, H-E-B (a US supermarket chain), EverQuote and HP.

Startups are also fans… users include finleap connect, Subspace and Clover Health. 

“Linkerd is a [specially differentiated] service mesh. In a space that’s very prone to hype cycles and marketing-driven development, we’ve always put our users first,” said William Morgan, CEO of Buoyant, the creator of Linkerd. “The Linkerd Steering Committee extends this same philosophy and will help us ensure that the needs of Linkerd adopters – who trust Linkerd to power mission-critical systems around the world – will continue to be at the utmost center of Linkerd’s evolution.” 

Initial committee members include Chris Campbell, cloud platform architect, HP; Christian Hüning, director of cloud technologies, finleap connect; Justin Turner, director of engineering, H-E-B; and Wiliam King, CTO and co-founder, Subspace.