Date: Sep 18, 2025 · San Francisco, CA
Today, Phala is thrilled to announce that dstack, the confidential computing foundation powering our vision, is becoming an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation. This move reflects our commitment to transparency, collaboration, and building infrastructure everyone can trust.
What is dstack?
dstack is a developer friendly and security first SDK to simplify the deployment of arbitrary containerized apps into TEE.
Key Features
- Secure Deployment: Deploy containerized apps securely in TEE in minutes
- Familiar Tools: Use familiar tools - just write a docker-compose.yaml
- Secret Management: Safely manage secrets and sensitive data
- ZT-HTTPS: Expose services via automated TLS termination
What This Means
- Phala will keep developing dstack to advance open, verifiable, and privacy-preserving cloud infrastructure. Under Linux Foundation stewardship, dstack’s roadmap, engineering, and community efforts will continue in the spirit of shared innovation.
- The project will adopt Linux Foundation’s governance, licensing, and IP policies, ensuring stronger legal grounding, predictable contribution processes, and clearer protections for users and contributors.
- Project assets—including the codebase, trademarks, logos, and domain ownership—will be held neutrally under the Foundation. This helps ensure long-term stability and neutrality, now and into the future.
Why Move to the Linux Foundation?
Joining the Linux Foundation brings several benefits for dstack, Phala, and everyone who depends on our technology:
- Trust & Credibility: Enterprises, developers, and organizations often have greater confidence in technology under independent, neutral governance.
- Broader Participation: With the Linux Foundation’s platform and tools (including LFX), dstack will be more discoverable, easier to contribute to, and more likely to attract contributions from diverse independent developers, corporations, and research institutions.
- Stronger Legal and IP Foundations: Clear, open policies around intellectual property, trademarks, licensing, and contribution agreements reduce risk.
- Ecosystem Synergies: Community-oriented development under LF enables better integration, visibility, and cooperation with other LF projects and open source initiatives.
What’s Next
- We will finalize the Technical Charter and Project Contribution Agreement with the LF.
- Ownership of dstack assets (logo, domain, GitHub org) will be transferred or shared under LF’s neutral management.
- The community will be invited to join the governance bodies, contribute to the roadmap, and help shape future features (performance, usability, privacy enhancements, integrations etc.).
- Phala will continue to be a lead contributor and steward of dstack, while embracing a broader community effort.
Quotes
“We believe that putting dstack under the Linux Foundation ensures it can grow beyond any single organization, while Phala remains deeply committed to its development and success.” — [Marvin, CEO, Phala]
Get Involved
If you’re interested in contributing, following the roadmap, or seeing how you can use dstack in your stack, here’s where to start:
- GitHub: https://github.com/dstack-TEE/dstack
- Community & governance docs: https://docs.phala.com/dstack/overview
Thank you to every contributor, user, and partner who has been with us on this journey. Moving dstack to the Linux Foundation is a milestone, but it’s just one step toward making confidential computing more open, trustworthy, and accessible for everyone.
