Talk:Singularity (software)

Notability
Evidence of notability in cited sources:, , , , , , , ~Kvng (talk) 03:13, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Software project renamed, what to do with this page?
According to  The Linux Foundation's announcement and the new project website, the software project named Singularity was renamed "Apptainer" on November 30, 2021.

The website listed in the article ("singularity.hpcng.org") already redirects to the new website.

Should we rename the article to "Apptainer (software)", or put in a redirect page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by D Johnston2 (talk • contribs) 19:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 2 December 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Withdrawn by proposer. (closed by non-admin page mover) Tol  (talk &#124; contribs) @ 02:52, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Singularity (software) → Apptainer (software) – According to The Linux Foundation's announcement (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/new-linux-foundation-project-accelerates-collaboration-on-container-systems-between-enterprise-and-high-performance-computing-environments/) and the new project website (https://apptainer.org/), the software project named Singularity was renamed "Apptainer" on November 30, 2021. The website listed in the article ("singularity.hpcng.org") already redirects to the new website. I'm a new user and cannot move it myself yet. D Johnston2 (talk) 19:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Hi, I'm an employee of the company Sylabs. We were the home of the Singularity project code for some time until it was moved into the HPCng organization. Because of conflict-of-interest we do not attempt to contribute to or edit the Wikipedia article for Singularity. Since May 2021 we have maintained a fork (SingularityCE https://sylabs.io/singularity/) which is not going to be renamed. We recognize this is a community maintained article and would just ask that, when considering a move/rename, the result ensures that the history of the project and its name is preserved clearly. Dtrudg-sylabs (talk) 20:50, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm not affiliated with a company, but I was an original developer for the Singularity software. I have issue with this move (as I suspect other community members do) because the "Apptainer" is a rename of just *one* fork of the project, and in fact there still exists an entire community around Singularity, and a company (Sylabs) that develops it. This rename would not just be erasing an entire history of the software, but stepping on or not respecting these communities. The company Sylabs was also founded by the original creator of Singularity (Greg Kurtzer) and the reason for the split was disagreements between him and his party, so this rename is unfortunately political and (from an outside perspective) seems like a power move to stifle the "other" Singularity. Finally, there are entire suites of tools focused on Singularity (https://github.com/singularityhub), and thousands of links and articles along with the original publications that will be disrespected and obliterated in this namespace by simply erasing the history of the project with this rename. Thus, since there is still a Singularity project and a community around that name, my request is to keep this page as is, out of respect for the still existing project and communities, and allow Apptainer to start fresh with a new page, as their project was just announced recently. A new Apptainer page can link back to the original Singularity page to show the history, and vice versa. Thank you! I don't think I have an account on here but I am @vsoch on GitHub. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:281:8600:140:E993:2925:62A2:8527 (talk) 21:17, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Based on these two comments and a long discussion in Slack, I think we should NOT move this page. A new page is better. D Johnston2 (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Reconsider proposal to move?
I read the discussion from late last year about renaming this page. I think the proposal should be re-raised.

Here's how I view things. Right now it's still really the same one piece of software, but distributed from two separate organizations/codebases. The original creator of the project as well as notable organizations in the industry (Linux Foundation and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) maintain the original codebase, now distributed as Apptainer. Sylabs, which had been overseeing the development on the "offical" codebase for some time, now maintains its own forked codebase, distributed as SingularityCE. There is still considerable cross-pollination between the projects. I understand based on the discussion that there are probably hurt feelings from the political maneuvers that resulted in the fork, but as a third-party observer (but a user of singularity), it's hard to argue that the project that this page is about hasn't been renamed Apptainer.

I think we should rename the page Apptainer, and change the lede to say "Apptainer, (formerly known as Singularity) is a free, cross-platform and open-source computer program that performs operating-system-level virtualization also known as containerization." This is what I would add to the History section (with citations to be added), possibly under a section called "Renaming and project forks": "In 2017, Kurtzer founded SingularityWare, which later became Sylabs, a company which directed the development of Singularity and built additional projects such as Sylabs Cloud and enterprise support plans to complement Singularity. The official distribution and documentation of Singularity was done via the sylabs.io domain during this time. In April 2020, Kurtzer left Sylabs and the control of the main Singularity repository was left to an organization called HPCng, for which Kurtzer was the chairman of the board. In May 2021, Sylabs forked the HPCng codebase to create its own project, also called Singularity. For a brief time after this, there were two separately maintained sets of codebases and documentation that were both named Singularity. To prevent confusion, the Sylabs project was subsequently renamed SingularityCE (Community Edition). In November 2021, the HPCng Singularity project was transferred to the Linux Foundation and was renamed Apptainer to further separate it from the forked project."

If the projects diverge further in the future then perhaps 2 articles will be necessary.

Isaac rowe1 (talk)


 * I second this suggestion. The two forks are not different enough to warrent two separate pages. My experience is that the community is now primarily following 'Apptainer'. Of course the role of Sylabs and the relationship to singularity should be discussed. I think the suggested History section is a good start. Quantum7 22:49, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I do not second the suggestion above, and I find the information misleading. First, about the forks not being "different enough." Although Apptainer currently takes a lot of commits from SingularityCE, that number seems to be decreasing, and comparing the roadmaps the projects are likely to continue to diverge. As a community member, and someone that was part of the project before splitting, I want to see both projects fairly represented. I also find the statement that "the community is following Apptainer" misleading. There was a recent meeting at the ISC High Performance Computing Conference (2022) https://www.isc-hpc.com/ and specifically the containers Birds of a Feather (BOF) https://container-in-hpc.org/isc/2022/2_bof.html and most of the attendees (national labs, other national and international academic centers) are not using Apptainer, but instead Podman and SingularityCE. I can attest this is true at my institution and the institutions that I collaborate with. Now that I've addressed these statements, I want to step back and say that this rivalry needs to stop. It is not healthy for the community that uses the software, whether that be Apptainer or SingularityCE. We need to focus on transparency and acknowledge that the project has split into two directions, both being used and valued by various parties. Instead of trying to focus on silencing the other side or arguing about some "true" lineage, I would encourage the authors here to focus on equality and transparency. To delete one project from the history here is not transparent. To claim that one is somehow better or more "true" than the other is misleading and frankly wrong. A project is driven by its contributors, and there are (still) an entire cohort on both sides. I suspect if we did a survey across centers we would find similar. We need to maintain this original history page, and each of the two projects, Apptainer and SingularityCE, can develop their own pages from that. That is what is fair, transparent, and not biased to an opinion or hurt feelings from the events that happened in these last years. The two projects need to move forward and minimally respect one another and not take action that comes across as malicious to harm the other one.

Vsoch (talk) 19:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Ok, maybe three pages are a compromise given the politics around this. However, I can't help regret that a Start-Class page will be further diluted. It's also not clear to me that 'Singularity' is a valid title to encompass both projects. Quantum7 12:15, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Dcat52 (talk) 16:11, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I came across the draft article for apptainer Draft:Apptainer and Robert provided this comment:
 * Please discuss the suitability of creating a separate subtopic article on the talk page of the parent article. Please resubmit this draft if there is rough consensus at the parent talk page to create the child article, or with an explanation that the child draft satisfies either general notability on its own or a special notability guide. Robert McClenontalk 00:37, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I believe the way to remedy this would be for this page to be more or less frozen in time with present-day knowledge through time. We would need something like a derivative works section where both are listed (any future ones could be added too). Authors writing can write about topic they are more familiar with, SingularityCE and Apptainer on their respective pages should they exist by work of authors. If the two projects diverge substantially enough that this page is deranked, I believe that is a question for Wikipedia/users to determine in the future.