In open source environments where there are less resources to invest in improvements, the stakes are high, and governments have started taking the problem seriously. The executive order was issued by the Biden administration. The US Office of Management and Budget issued supply chain security guidance to federal agencies.

It used to be the only criteria for the quality of a piece of software. Chris DeRusha, the US federal chief information security officer and deputy national cyber director, wrote in the White House announcement that technology must be developed in a way that makes it resistant to cyber threats. Criminal syndicates and foreign governments are trying to compromise our digital infrastructure.

Some of the same protections can be achieved with other Linux distributions, but it's a valuable step to see a release that's been stripped down and purpose-built.

The train of thought that we need to remove the potentially vulnerable elements and list the software included in a particular container or Linux release is the result of work done by Chainguard employees. There is a constellation of software supply chain controls. It's a simple idea. It could be very good to get organizations to adopt these practices.

When it comes to software supply chain security,Generating a manifest doesn't mean better security in itself. The difference will be made by how organizations act on the information. A defense is only useful if it is already in place before something goes wrong.

Chainguard's Conill says that people have been struggling to make things work with previous distributions. They can have a dependency on a piece of software that they didn't know was there. It turns out that there was a small amount of coke in that teddy bear.