The Cloud Foundry Foundation strives to keep Cloud Foundry both open source
and tailored to enterprise needs. Occasionally this is not straightforward,
and requires us to change the way we make Cloud Foundry available to
downstream distributions and open source users.

Currently, the buildpack project teams distribute the official Cloud
Foundry buildpacks on Github and bosh.io as pre-packaged bundles that
include all of their dependencies, such as language interpreters and
compilers. These offline buildpacks do not require an internet connection
when they are used to push Cloud Foundry apps. The project teams package
these offline buildpacks and make them available to encourage downstream
distributions to include the unmodified, official buildpacks wherever
possible. This promotes a consistent experience for developers across
different Cloud Foundry distributions.

Recently, the CFF has clarified its guidance to project teams with regard
to the distribution of proprietary software [1]. Since the buildpacks
include integrations with proprietary agent software, we need to change our
approach to buildpack distribution. We will soon cease to package and
distribute the offline buildpacks. Instead, we will publish instructions
for downstream consumers to package the offline buildpacks themselves.

Organizations who wish to distribute the offline buildpacks will be
responsible for any required licensing or export compliance obligations.
The buildpack project teams will publish and maintain a public list of
these integrations to make this process easier.

We still encourage downstream distributions to include the official
buildpacks with minimal changes where possible, and to work with the Cloud
Foundry Buildpacks team to integrate any changes they require upstream into
the official buildpacks.


I've CC'ed Ben Hale (Java Buildpack Lead) and Stephen Levine (Core
Buildpacks Lead), who can help answer any questions about this change.

[1]
https://lists.cloudfoundry.org/archives/list/cf-dev(a)lists.cloudfoundry.org/thread/PLV44TLOBQVS7UEHRPQFCXPJMVQIA3T3/


--
Chip Childers
CTO, Cloud Foundry Foundation
1.267.250.0815