>> Docker, the company, is failing. Docker, the container technology, is alive and very well.
Is it though? Podman is more well liked (no daemon / non-root) and Kubernetes doesn't have direct support for it any more. I don't think it matters much that k8s uses CRI-O but docker needs to be #1 for running a container on a single machine. Yet, they seem to be letting that slip away because it is not directly monetizable. Software businesses need to be creative - invest a lot into free things, which support monetization of others. If you want low risk returns, buy T-bills.
> Is it though? Podman is more well liked (no daemon / non-root) and Kubernetes doesn't have direct support for it any more.
I've used "Docker" as in "containerization", since they are often used synonymously and the grandparents intent was definitely to criticize the latter. Docker itself will quite likely stay around as a name, but I have no faith in the company.
It seems the company is slowly trying to make users pay for it. Not too long ago it was free for companies, then they made companies pay to use it. Now they're making people pay to store images.
In the next few years I would be surprised if they didn't introduce a new way to monetize it, leading up to removing the use of any docker executable at all without payment.
Many will come to comment "that's absurd, and you could just use an old executable you already downloaded prior to them halting it's circulation", etc. But I do think the writing is on the wall here with Docker continually getting greedy.
If they don't monetize the use of Docker containers in general by making users pay to run them, they have other options like spyware and ads - e.g. install telemetry in the base of the system somehow to sell the personal data they receive from all images*, etc.
* I know this may not work directly as I've stated it, just giving the flavor of idea
> It seems the company is slowly trying to make users pay for it
I appreciate that pun ;)
> Many will come to comment "that's absurd, and you could just use an old executable you already downloaded prior to them halting it's circulation", etc.
I don't see this as absurd at all. The problem Docker has is that it failed to use it's market share. Making these moves now that easy alternatives exists (Podman, open registries, k8s etc) just doesn't have the pull and alienates their remaining customers.
I don't have any issue with Docker charging for things. If they can get away with charging $0.50 every time someone types docker ps, great. Unfortunately that isn't the reality as competition exists. Eventually bad monetization strategies will lead to business decline.
The company has never been good though. The technology was great, but they never found a way to monetise it properly, and their whole approach to outreach, community, and developer experience was terrible. Their support, non-existent.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that, given the ubiquity of their product, I can't think of a worse way a company could have performed. It's been about 10 years now since it really took off, and in that time, the technology has been great, but dealing with the company, always been difficult.
Nah, you just didn't look carefully enough. Docker the technology has been recurring amateur hour of screwups. For example, they hashed the downloaded data but forgot to compare the hash to expected value.
The only thing "great" about Docker was the rough idea of easy-to-transport filesystem images that could run just about anywhere, and the fact that they managed to make that kind of thinking mainstream.
I disagree with you. I've used it in production for almost a decade now. There have been issues sure, but name me a single production-level technology that hasn't had problems?
- Microsoft Windows: Various versions of Windows have had critical security vulnerabilities over the years, leading to widespread malware outbreaks like WannaCry and NotPetya.
- OpenSSL: In 2014, the Heartbleed bug was discovered in OpenSSL, which left millions of websites vulnerable to attacks that could steal sensitive data.
- Apache Struts: In 2017, the Equifax data breach was caused by a vulnerability in Apache Struts, a popular open-source framework for building web applications.
- Boeing 737 Max: In 2018 and 2019, two deadly crashes were caused by a software flaw in the flight control system of the Boeing 737 Max airplane.
- Google Cloud: In 2020, a widespread outage of Google Cloud services caused disruptions for many businesses and organisations that rely on the platform for their operations.
Many things have had individual bad incidents. Docker has had many, and they've been of incredibly naive kind. To compare Docker to the kind of careful engineering done in e.g. airplanes is just silly. The commits to Docker ("Moby") have historically been underwhelming. Docker is to containers as what MongoDB was to NoSQL.
Docker either came up or popularized the idea that completely dominates how almost all services work today. That is something imo. It is obvious in hindsight maybe but not in 2012.
Docker, the company, is failing. Docker, as in containerization technology, is alive and very well.
(edited for clarity)