[Rancher] Could you help us understand the development and support status of RancherOS for 2020 and beyond?

Development Status

EDIT (FEB 2024): RancherOS 1.x has a new name and new identity.

RancherOS was re-named in July 2022<https://github.com/rancher/elemental/pull/161> and is now known as Elemental<https://github.com/rancher/elemental>.

It's evolved, and is now based on SLE Micro<https://www.suse.com/products/micro/> -> into SLEMicro-Rancher<https://github.com/rancher/elemental/issues/1008>.

Because it’s based on SLE Micro, that is derived from SLES, it benefits from all the Security Certifications <https://www.suse.com/support/security/certifications/>, hardening<https://documentation.suse.com/compliance/all/html/SLES-openscap/index.html#openscap-ssg-profiles-sle15> and hardware certifications<https://www.suse.com/product-certification/yes-certified/faq/> of SLES.

EDIT (NOV 2021): RancherOS 1.x is past its EOL milestone and no longer maintained.

RancherOS 1.x is currently in a maintain-only-as-essential mode. That is to say, it is no longer being actively maintained at a code level other than addressing critical or security fixes. There are two significant reasons behind this product decision:

1. Docker. The current industry requirements for a container runtime is very much evolving. Container runtimes like containerd and CRIO are now being actively considered as the default choice. RancherOS 1.x, which was specifically designed around using Docker engine only, unfortunately does not lend itself, in its current design, to this new evolving requirement. 

2. ISV Support. RancherOS was specifically designed as a minimalistic OS to support purpose-built containerized applications. It was not designed to be used as a general-purpose OS (such as CentOS or Ubuntu). As such, most ISVs have not certified their software to run on RancherOS, nor does RancherOS even contain the necessary components for many of these applications to run. 

Support Status

RancherOS 1.x is no longer commercially supported.

Please refer this FAQ: Does my support subscription to Rancher include support for RancherOS?
Any assistance from Rancher Support on RancherOS topics, filed as support cases, is not SLA- bound.