The recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America event was eye opening. Sure, I have attended the show in the past, but the reported 12,000 attendees was 50% more than the event hosted last year and showed that Kubernetes hysteria has not waned. But, did the event also highlight just how unique Kubernetes is among its cloud native peers?

First of all, the Kubernetes-focused KubeCon event was huge. I have no standing to dispute the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) reported numbers for the show, mostly because I can’t count that high, but the packed events I did attend at the event definitely showed it was “at capacity.” It wasn’t quite too big, but it’s definitely trending toward becoming an event that might need some sort of logistical change in order to maintain a sense of order.

It was not just that there were a lot of people attending the show. A call from the keynote stage for people attending their first KubeCon event resulted in a majority thrusting their hands into the air. That was eye opening in the fact that while it may seem that Kubernetes has been around “forever,” it’s really just over 5 years old, and its current reign is just half of that.

It’s hard to remember now but there was a time when Kubernetes was a distant No. 3 in terms of container orchestrators being used in the market. It’s also eye opening to now realize that the firms that hatched the two platforms that towered over Kubernetes have had to completely re-jigger their business models under the Kubernetes onslaught.

And full credit to the CNCF for attempting to diffuse some of that attention from Kubernetes by spending the vast majority of the KubeCon opening keynote address touting some of the nearly two dozen graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects it also hosts. But, it was really the Big K that stole the show.

And that got me thinking that perhaps what we are seeing with Kubernetes is really something unique. That the platform came along at the right time, in the right place, from the right people, and outlined in a unique way that make it a true unicorn in the cloud world.

How else can you describe an open source platform that has been adopted by just about everyone, regardless of their size or scope, all fighting to tout just how “open” and “pure” their use of the platform is?

And it’s not like other “open source” projects have not garnered this level of adoration. We need to only look at something like OpenStack to see a similar platform that in its heyday drew thousands of worshipers all over the world to hear the latest on the technology.

Craig McLuckie, VP of product and development at VMware and one of the original developers of what became Kubernetes while he worked at Google, explained that there was a lot of thought that went into the governance structure for Kubernetes that has allowed it to avoid “Balkanization” that has impacted other efforts.

“Some of it was intelligent design,” McLuckie said, before quickly adding that, “Some of it was luck.”

“That was something that we thought long and hard about both in terms of the governance of the community, but also in terms of governance of the foundation,” McLuckie added. “We worked hard to create a separation of responsibilities and power.”

This focus seems to be what is stymying other cloud native efforts.

Two projects in particular were somewhat under the microscope at the event: Istio and Knative. The former has become a powerful service mesh tool, while the latter is gaining momentum as a way to manage functions-as-a-service (FaaS) on top of Kubernetes.

Google has a hand in steering both of those projects, but has so far decided to not donate either into a neutral-host foundation. Could that limit the eventual adoption or neutrality of those platforms?

“If we had our druthers do we think that CNCF has been a really good source of governance? Yes, absolutely,” said Brian Gracely, senior director of product strategy at Red Hat, at the KubeCon event as to whether his company would like to see Knative and Istio moved into a neutral-host model. But, he also explained that more recent conversations with Google have led Red Hat to feel comfortable with where those projects are today and that Google will maintain a necessary level of openness to allow them to flourish.

Those projects do indeed have robust momentum behind them that make them good horses to bet on in the service mesh and serverless space. However, it also seems that they are missing the horn and wings that has separated Kubernetes from the team of other open source projects.

And as the crowd at this year’s KubeCon event showed: People like to to see horses, but people want to see a unicorn.