front matter
I have been working on computer security for close to 40 years, and for the past 20 years, I’ve focused on container technologies. When Docker showed up about 10 years ago, it triggered a revolution in the way the people distributed and ran applications on the internet. As I worked on Docker, I felt it could have been designed better. Working with a root-running daemon and then adding more and more daemons felt like the wrong approach. Instead, I felt we could use low-level operating systems concepts to create a tool that ran the same containerized applications in the same manner but with more security and requiring fewer privileges. With this in mind, my team at Red Hat set out to build a series of tools to help developers and administrators run containers in the most secure way possible. Out of this effort came Podman.
I started blogging on subjects like SELinux in the early 2000s and have been writing articles ever since. I have written hundreds of articles on containers and security over the years, but I wanted to consolidate the ideas and describe the technology of Podman in a single book I could point users and customers to.