https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/2015/12/open-c... https://kubernetes.io/blog/2016/12/container-runtime-interfa...
You can see the releases and specs that are supported by all major container runtimes here: https://opencontainers.org/release-notices/overview/
For example, OpenShift ships https://cri-o.io in its kubernetes distribution as its container runtime, so this isn't really new.
Disclosure: I helped start OCI and CNCF