Kubernetes federation doesn’t really help with lock-in. Its for multi-cluster management. It’s also kind of stalled / going to be rethought - it has too many issues to be used at scale. Some may still like it of course.

There are two points of lock-in: beneath Kubernetes or on top of Kubernetes.

You still need to install and manage your cluster, so the low level lock-in of a distro is hard to avoid. What you may be looking for is kubeadm. https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/kub...

It is the closest primitive to help standardize “here’s how to install and run a K8s cluster in a certified way”. It’s unfortunately incomplete.

As for what’s on top of Kubernetes, that will be an area ripe for completion and lock-in.