Major banks once built their own Linux kernels because no distributions existed, but today commercial distros — and Kubernetes — are universal. At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, AWS’s Jesse Butler noted that Kubernetes has reached the same maturity Linux once did: organizations no longer build bespoke control planes but rely on shared standards. That shift influences how AWS contributes to open source, emphasizing community-wide solutions rather than AWS-specific products.

Butler highlighted two AWS EKS projects donated to Kubernetes SIGs: KRO and Karpenter. KRO addresses the proliferation of custom controllers that emerged once CRDs made everything representable as Kubernetes resources. By generating CRDs and microcontrollers from simple YAML schemas, KRO transforms “glue code” into an automated service within Kubernetes itself. Karpenter tackles the limits of traditional autoscaling by delivering just-in-time, cost-optimized node provisioning with a flexible, intuitive API. Both projects embody AWS’s evolving philosophy: building features that serve the entire Kubernetes ecosystem as it matures into a true enterprise standard.

Learn more from The New Stack about the latest in Kube Resource Orchestrator and Karpenter:  

Migrating From Cluster Autoscaler to Karpenter v0.32

How Amazon EKS Auto Mode Simplifies Kubernetes Cluster Management (Part 1) 

Kubernetes Gets a New Resource Orchestrator in the Form of Kro

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