Canonical acquires container management tool LXD and doesn’t make it snap-exclusive

Ubuntu developer Canonical has officially taken over the LXD Project. The project was founded by Canonical and was already supported by Ubuntu, but was not an official part of the company until now.

Canonical writes in a newsletter that it believes that the LXD Project would be better off if it became directly part of the company itself. This would make the project more scalable and more visible within the community. Canonical says it wants to improve the documentation for the tool, among other things.

According to Canonical, nothing will change in practice for the Linux Container Daemon. However, it does mean that the original developers will stop the project and that Canonical will continue development. Those developers would find the decision ‘unfortunate, but understandable’. Furthermore, the GitHub repothe website and transferred the YouTube channel to Canonical.

The Apache 2 license also remains the same, Canonical writes in a faq. According to the company, the tool remains free and available as open source software. Canonical also says that LXD will remain available independently of Ubuntu and will not be offered exclusively as a snap package. According to the company, this is ‘the easiest installation method’, but alternative download methods remain available, according to the company.

Canonical created LXD, which stands for Linux Containers Daemon, eight years ago as a management tool for containers in Ubuntu. Although the company itself has always made the largest contribution to its development, it never officially belonged to Canonical itself.