[shykes]

OCI focuses on the intermediary runnable format (think "ELF for containers") for a simple pragmatic reason: to accomodate pre-existing container packaging systems which were not compatible with each other. A good analogy would be designing a common vm that different programming languages can compile to, without forcing all developers to adopt the same syntax (a hopeless task).

Ironically this was specifically to accomodate the ACI format pushed by CoreOS, which is completely incompatible with Docker images. We designed OCI and runc to allow both Docker and ACI to target a common format and low-level runtime. The reasoning was "let's deliver a solid building blick which everybody can use instead of boiling the ocean with a giant over-reaching spec".