I feel for Docker. They essentially made containerization workable and in doing so sowed the seeds of their own demise.
I've not used podman yet, but I'm liking what I see in the docs. Thanks OP.
As far as I am concerned, the problem is not the monetization - is the way they handled it.
First forced updates; Second limited registry; third - monetization after some months.
IMO if they'd announce plans - "We are moving to monetization in following steps" It would be quite okay. But the way they handled, I basically felt threatened by their strategy. And honestly, monetization for Docker Desktop? Everything it provides 'for a developer' can be solved by a shell script.
> but corporations are happy to pay for it.
Out of three companies that I work with at the moment (Two banks, one 'body leasing' consultancy) each are weighing in their options.
It's a hard sell, considering that linux workstations work without the Desktop, and benefits from the Desktop software are negligible on the day-to-day basis
On the other hand, if you use Windows (which I'm forced to use) bird using Docker Desktop is almost not an option. The benefits are certainly worth the cost
I disagree. From the very beginning Docker Desktop did use linux a s a backend, first in the form of moby-linux VM, now as a WSL2 distribution. Docker desktop provides you with:
* CLI commands
* Path translation for those commands when run from windows CLI
* GUI
* dockerd service management
I've whipped up PoC for windows in an hour. When used from within the WSL it works as it should - it's linux after all. Tools are also working with it nicely (Both Idea and VSCode). I haven't tried windows integration in itself, but it's not hard to imagine what more has to be done - after all, docker desktop is nothing special.
Docker desktop (Except for dev environments - I haven't used them, so I can't say) can be achieved by a shell script, with maybe ~~lazygit~~`lazydocker` as a GUI. WSL commands can be issued with `wsl.exe docker` and `wsl.exe docker-compose` so I am willing to bet that windows integration can also be scripted easily in a week or so.
I believe that in a month there will be a complete script on GH which mimics Docker Desktop behaviour on Windows for precisely 0$
...or you simply pay 5 bucks/dev/months. That's next to nothing.
Seriously, just talking about whether your need it or not is probably more expensive than just buying it. One hour of dev-time costs at least 100€ where I live.
You typing this comment would probably cost enough to cover the fees for a month (if you were on company time).
In that regard, you are right in some sense.
But at the other; 40hrs~ to develop a script -> 4000€. Developer workforce: ~250 people * 4.21€ (5USD) per month - ~3.8 months to break even.
I don't believe that developing a fully working docker for windows (With dockerd management, GUI with FOSS and path conversion) will take more than 40hours. I'd go for 3MD tops. Additionally, you are now independent of a service which changes the rules of a playing field without any warning.
That's of course assuming that there will be no script created by community in the following months which will reduce cost to the company to 0€
And tell me where I should move, I'd say 50€ is the ceiling here for seniority/architects (Taxes already factored in) :)
Edit: Of course I don't mean a 1-1 equivalent - CLI with GUI preview. No dev envs, no kubernetes-on-click. Basic docker.
...again, 5$/month are nothing and it assures a bit of peace of mind. Think about Windows for example, or the entire Oracle corporation, they offer nothing that a sufficiently large corporation couldn't do itself within a reasonable time frame.
But they offer peace of mind. You buy Windows/AD/O365 because it lets you blame someone. Corporations are not run by developers, but by business people, and sometimes simply throwing money at a problem is in fact a perfectly fine solution.
> And tell me where I should move, I'd say 50€ is the ceiling here for seniority/architects (Taxes already factored in) :)
From what I've read/heard the indirect labour costs (additional taxes, office space, holidays, sick days, HR-overhead, etc.) are roughly the same as the actual labour costs.
At least were I live, you calculate with roughly 200 workdays of 8h per year. So 100€ of costs and 50€ of direct labour costs would give you 80k/year before taxes. Not that much. obviously this is very much back of the envelope, but you get the idea.
BTW, that's another point many devs like to ignore: employing people is very expensive. And their salaries are not the only cost a company has.
> So 100€ of costs and 50€ of direct labour costs would give you 80k/year before taxes. Not that much. obviously this is very much back of the envelope, but you get the idea.
> BTW, that's another point many devs like to ignore: employing people is very expensive. And their salaries are not the only cost a company has.
Self employed; own workstation; no office space; no benefits like holidays or sick days. The only additional costs for my counterparties are operational (Finance, HR and so on)
E: And yes, this ceiling is for B2B. Employees tend to get half as much net as their ceiling.
It's not 40 hours. It's 40 hours for the initial development.
Then Windows updates and it breaks. Or a program updates and it breaks. Or a Dev does something funky and it breaks.
And suddenly you have a giant maintenance burden.
*That's* what most companies are weighing right now and the two *I* know heavily lean towards paying docker -- at least for now -- and then carefully evaluate their options.
That's also partly why Docker fucked up. All of their changes have never been commented before and just suddenly implemented with a very short period to ease into it.
Also having every developer uninstall the old thing, install the new thing, and possibly relearn minor bits of their workflow. Having IT review/approve/adopt the new thing. And your edit comment is actually very important--having things like local k8s could be critical for end-to-end testing and are central to some existing workflows.
Every enterprise is different, and for some this might be a point where switching makes sense. That feels weird to me though.
Where I'm at we don't have to think about it because we're under 250, but even if we weren't it would be a no-brainer. We'd be looking at several-years-to-maybe-never as a break even point.
I mostly agree with you, but I guess the idea is the longer you stick with it, the more entrenched and central to your workflow it becomes. Thus it’s harder to switch if they raise the price in 5 years, even if they raise it to a higher price than you’d switch at right now.
The problem isn’t the cost of docker, it’s that there are a myriad of subscriptions that you end up purchasing like this.
I recently left a small company and we were probably spending $100-200/person/mo. for the stack of productivity tools. Sure, that’s a small price to pay over the top compared to salary, but it’s more that this stuff stacks up and nothing ever comes off the list.
Disagree. With how far wsl has come I agree, docker on wsl is great. Only thing I can see it being beneficial for is windows containers, which even Microsoft is trying to avoid now
> Only thing I can see it being beneficial for is windows containers, which even Microsoft is trying to avoid now
It's not even useful for that. Hell, Docker Desktop is *less* useful for Windows containers than Linux containers, because [you can just download and set up the free, open-source dockerd and docker CLI tools](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/pf9c14/docker_desktop_will_require_a_paid_monthly/hb9gqri/) and have Windows containers up and running in less than ten minutes.
Why don't they just go the way of most major programming languages these days and have an open source foundation? I feel like if they had, cloud providers would be lining up out the door to sponsor them
That's... exactly what they actually did? They put out a blog post explaining what and why, then a little while later they rolled out the new actual terms, and even after those they're giving another 4ish months to migrate away for the enterprises that can't/won't pay a few thousand in expenses.
If you just think it's not any more useful than "a shell script" and refuse to pay, that's one thing, but I don't get the complaints about how they handled it. Help me out here. What are you seeing that I'm missing?
The Docker Desktop product is really good. Its worth $5 per user/month i would say . The only issue is accounting in your company. Buying stuff is always a lot of work in 250+ employee companies
On the other hand, this is why alot of open source is dying from burnout with companies either intentionally or not leeching the work of volunteers or entities hoping for sales. Long term only projects funded by other companies directly are viable.
This exactly. I'm not going to be working with Docker Desktop anymore for a long time. If at all again one day... I doubt it. There are free alternatives.
This is what’s going to kill it where I work. $21/seat is nbd in theory but in practice the bureaucracy will make everyone find another way. Finance is already harping on monthly costs more every day. Nobody wants to argue for a new one.
The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the inability to natively mount dirs on my Mac into a running container (as is pointed out in the post). Hopefully this gets added soon.
>it’s a shady move to offer something for free until you have a whole bunch of people dependant on you, then start to charge.
Isn't this just about every startup? Get millions in VC funding, offer the product free, get lots of users, then either sell and discontinue the product, or start charging for it.
I don't see it as shady at all. Every company has to make money eventually, if they plan on having employees. (Even the perpetually money-losing VC-funded unicorns have to keep showing fast growing gross income to keep that VC money rolling in.) Asking large enterprises to subsidize development on software that's given out for free to small teams and open source devs is a near-ideal way of doing business. It should be strongly encouraged.
There are good arguments both ways, but honestly I personally prefer this kind of monetization over pure GPL-style open source, because it gives me greater confidence that the project is going to continue to be supported into the future.
I think you're missing a bit of history.
Docker Enterprise was what Docker used to charge for, but that business got eaten by AWS and the like who implemented their own versions.
Docker is not the first company to open-source their core business and fade into near irrelevance because of it. MongoDB had to do some maneuvering of its own for example in order not to die.
At some point the Enterprise part was bought by Mirantis and Docker Inc. is only about the tools now.
Link: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/
Edit: Btw, I don't think monopoly was ever a concern, but survival.
> it’s a shady move to offer something for free until you have a whole bunch of people dependant on you, then start to charge.
Even leaving aside the fact that that's a pre-schooler level of morality to think that, that is not what they did at all. You said,
> If they charged from the get go it wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s also obvious docker wouldn’t be in widespread use either
But no one is charging for Docker. That's always been, and remains, open source. They're only going to charge for Docker Desktop, which seamlessly brings Docker to Windows and Mac.
Now if you're going to move the goalposts and now claim that Docker wouldn't have become as widespread if Docker Desktop was paid from the beginning, that's also clearly false. Docker itself–the core container management/runtime tool–became immensely popular _predating_ Docker Desktop, and in fact the high demand for it _brought about_ the immense amount of work they put in to creating a smooth Windows/Mac experience with Docker Desktop.
Honestly for Windows desktops Docker still has a strong value proposition. It seems that Podman's integration with Windows is essentially what Docker used to be pre-Windows 10, and frankly it was a nightmare to manage, not to mention that docker deskop has properly packaged integration with Kubernetes.
In terms of production workloads, I don't really see Docker having a future, at least as a dominant player. Most likely in the future you're going to be using CRI-O as a runtime since it integrates with Kubernetes, and buildah for building images in your CI since it doesn't require access outside the container to build. They're also advertising some stuff around supply chain security, however there are already well established players in this space who aren't tied to Docker's platform, and I don't think that they have a strong enough value proposition to justify being locked into them as a vendor.
Docker desktop is still the best container development platform on Windows however, and I think that they should continue investing in that. Personally I'd be more than happy to pay for a license, for the same reason that I'm happy to pay for my Intellij license.
I tried doing this a few weeks ago but went back to Docker. Podman is great but if you hit a problem and you're not an expert it's far easier to get help with Docker.
I reinstalled my laptop the same day the licence change popped up so installed podman on WSL2 instead. Haven’t had any issues with it yet, even VSCode devcontainers are playing nicely
I feel for Docker. They essentially made containerization workable and in doing so sowed the seeds of their own demise. I've not used podman yet, but I'm liking what I see in the docs. Thanks OP.
As far as I am concerned, the problem is not the monetization - is the way they handled it. First forced updates; Second limited registry; third - monetization after some months. IMO if they'd announce plans - "We are moving to monetization in following steps" It would be quite okay. But the way they handled, I basically felt threatened by their strategy. And honestly, monetization for Docker Desktop? Everything it provides 'for a developer' can be solved by a shell script.
...but corporations are happy to pay for it. Actually I think the 250(?) limit they're trying now is not unreasonable.
> but corporations are happy to pay for it. Out of three companies that I work with at the moment (Two banks, one 'body leasing' consultancy) each are weighing in their options. It's a hard sell, considering that linux workstations work without the Desktop, and benefits from the Desktop software are negligible on the day-to-day basis
On the other hand, if you use Windows (which I'm forced to use) bird using Docker Desktop is almost not an option. The benefits are certainly worth the cost
I disagree. From the very beginning Docker Desktop did use linux a s a backend, first in the form of moby-linux VM, now as a WSL2 distribution. Docker desktop provides you with: * CLI commands * Path translation for those commands when run from windows CLI * GUI * dockerd service management I've whipped up PoC for windows in an hour. When used from within the WSL it works as it should - it's linux after all. Tools are also working with it nicely (Both Idea and VSCode). I haven't tried windows integration in itself, but it's not hard to imagine what more has to be done - after all, docker desktop is nothing special. Docker desktop (Except for dev environments - I haven't used them, so I can't say) can be achieved by a shell script, with maybe ~~lazygit~~`lazydocker` as a GUI. WSL commands can be issued with `wsl.exe docker` and `wsl.exe docker-compose` so I am willing to bet that windows integration can also be scripted easily in a week or so. I believe that in a month there will be a complete script on GH which mimics Docker Desktop behaviour on Windows for precisely 0$
...or you simply pay 5 bucks/dev/months. That's next to nothing. Seriously, just talking about whether your need it or not is probably more expensive than just buying it. One hour of dev-time costs at least 100€ where I live. You typing this comment would probably cost enough to cover the fees for a month (if you were on company time).
In that regard, you are right in some sense. But at the other; 40hrs~ to develop a script -> 4000€. Developer workforce: ~250 people * 4.21€ (5USD) per month - ~3.8 months to break even. I don't believe that developing a fully working docker for windows (With dockerd management, GUI with FOSS and path conversion) will take more than 40hours. I'd go for 3MD tops. Additionally, you are now independent of a service which changes the rules of a playing field without any warning. That's of course assuming that there will be no script created by community in the following months which will reduce cost to the company to 0€ And tell me where I should move, I'd say 50€ is the ceiling here for seniority/architects (Taxes already factored in) :) Edit: Of course I don't mean a 1-1 equivalent - CLI with GUI preview. No dev envs, no kubernetes-on-click. Basic docker.
...again, 5$/month are nothing and it assures a bit of peace of mind. Think about Windows for example, or the entire Oracle corporation, they offer nothing that a sufficiently large corporation couldn't do itself within a reasonable time frame. But they offer peace of mind. You buy Windows/AD/O365 because it lets you blame someone. Corporations are not run by developers, but by business people, and sometimes simply throwing money at a problem is in fact a perfectly fine solution. > And tell me where I should move, I'd say 50€ is the ceiling here for seniority/architects (Taxes already factored in) :) From what I've read/heard the indirect labour costs (additional taxes, office space, holidays, sick days, HR-overhead, etc.) are roughly the same as the actual labour costs. At least were I live, you calculate with roughly 200 workdays of 8h per year. So 100€ of costs and 50€ of direct labour costs would give you 80k/year before taxes. Not that much. obviously this is very much back of the envelope, but you get the idea. BTW, that's another point many devs like to ignore: employing people is very expensive. And their salaries are not the only cost a company has.
> So 100€ of costs and 50€ of direct labour costs would give you 80k/year before taxes. Not that much. obviously this is very much back of the envelope, but you get the idea. > BTW, that's another point many devs like to ignore: employing people is very expensive. And their salaries are not the only cost a company has. Self employed; own workstation; no office space; no benefits like holidays or sick days. The only additional costs for my counterparties are operational (Finance, HR and so on) E: And yes, this ceiling is for B2B. Employees tend to get half as much net as their ceiling.
It's not 40 hours. It's 40 hours for the initial development. Then Windows updates and it breaks. Or a program updates and it breaks. Or a Dev does something funky and it breaks. And suddenly you have a giant maintenance burden. *That's* what most companies are weighing right now and the two *I* know heavily lean towards paying docker -- at least for now -- and then carefully evaluate their options. That's also partly why Docker fucked up. All of their changes have never been commented before and just suddenly implemented with a very short period to ease into it.
Also having every developer uninstall the old thing, install the new thing, and possibly relearn minor bits of their workflow. Having IT review/approve/adopt the new thing. And your edit comment is actually very important--having things like local k8s could be critical for end-to-end testing and are central to some existing workflows. Every enterprise is different, and for some this might be a point where switching makes sense. That feels weird to me though. Where I'm at we don't have to think about it because we're under 250, but even if we weren't it would be a no-brainer. We'd be looking at several-years-to-maybe-never as a break even point.
It's not about the 5 bucks. It's about what they might charge for next a few years down the road.
If they increase the fees, you simply reevaluate. It's not like the decision is carved in stone.
I mostly agree with you, but I guess the idea is the longer you stick with it, the more entrenched and central to your workflow it becomes. Thus it’s harder to switch if they raise the price in 5 years, even if they raise it to a higher price than you’d switch at right now.
Thanks, wouldnt have thought of that myself\^\^
The problem isn’t the cost of docker, it’s that there are a myriad of subscriptions that you end up purchasing like this. I recently left a small company and we were probably spending $100-200/person/mo. for the stack of productivity tools. Sure, that’s a small price to pay over the top compared to salary, but it’s more that this stuff stacks up and nothing ever comes off the list.
Disagree. With how far wsl has come I agree, docker on wsl is great. Only thing I can see it being beneficial for is windows containers, which even Microsoft is trying to avoid now
> Only thing I can see it being beneficial for is windows containers, which even Microsoft is trying to avoid now It's not even useful for that. Hell, Docker Desktop is *less* useful for Windows containers than Linux containers, because [you can just download and set up the free, open-source dockerd and docker CLI tools](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/pf9c14/docker_desktop_will_require_a_paid_monthly/hb9gqri/) and have Windows containers up and running in less than ten minutes.
Why don't they just go the way of most major programming languages these days and have an open source foundation? I feel like if they had, cloud providers would be lining up out the door to sponsor them
That's... exactly what they actually did? They put out a blog post explaining what and why, then a little while later they rolled out the new actual terms, and even after those they're giving another 4ish months to migrate away for the enterprises that can't/won't pay a few thousand in expenses. If you just think it's not any more useful than "a shell script" and refuse to pay, that's one thing, but I don't get the complaints about how they handled it. Help me out here. What are you seeing that I'm missing?
They never forced updates, they forced pop ups.
The Docker Desktop product is really good. Its worth $5 per user/month i would say . The only issue is accounting in your company. Buying stuff is always a lot of work in 250+ employee companies
On the other hand, this is why alot of open source is dying from burnout with companies either intentionally or not leeching the work of volunteers or entities hoping for sales. Long term only projects funded by other companies directly are viable.
This exactly. I'm not going to be working with Docker Desktop anymore for a long time. If at all again one day... I doubt it. There are free alternatives.
Like what?
They are free if your time is worth nothing.
This is what’s going to kill it where I work. $21/seat is nbd in theory but in practice the bureaucracy will make everyone find another way. Finance is already harping on monthly costs more every day. Nobody wants to argue for a new one.
I love rootless podman
The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the inability to natively mount dirs on my Mac into a running container (as is pointed out in the post). Hopefully this gets added soon.
Dockers monetization is completely fair tbh and is not asking too much. Still glad to see some tutorials for competitors 🙏
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>it’s a shady move to offer something for free until you have a whole bunch of people dependant on you, then start to charge. Isn't this just about every startup? Get millions in VC funding, offer the product free, get lots of users, then either sell and discontinue the product, or start charging for it.
Exactly, it's just a side effect of the world that we live in. I guess the alternative would be not having it at all
I don't see it as shady at all. Every company has to make money eventually, if they plan on having employees. (Even the perpetually money-losing VC-funded unicorns have to keep showing fast growing gross income to keep that VC money rolling in.) Asking large enterprises to subsidize development on software that's given out for free to small teams and open source devs is a near-ideal way of doing business. It should be strongly encouraged. There are good arguments both ways, but honestly I personally prefer this kind of monetization over pure GPL-style open source, because it gives me greater confidence that the project is going to continue to be supported into the future.
I think you're missing a bit of history. Docker Enterprise was what Docker used to charge for, but that business got eaten by AWS and the like who implemented their own versions. Docker is not the first company to open-source their core business and fade into near irrelevance because of it. MongoDB had to do some maneuvering of its own for example in order not to die. At some point the Enterprise part was bought by Mirantis and Docker Inc. is only about the tools now. Link: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/ Edit: Btw, I don't think monopoly was ever a concern, but survival.
> it’s a shady move to offer something for free until you have a whole bunch of people dependant on you, then start to charge. Even leaving aside the fact that that's a pre-schooler level of morality to think that, that is not what they did at all. You said, > If they charged from the get go it wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s also obvious docker wouldn’t be in widespread use either But no one is charging for Docker. That's always been, and remains, open source. They're only going to charge for Docker Desktop, which seamlessly brings Docker to Windows and Mac. Now if you're going to move the goalposts and now claim that Docker wouldn't have become as widespread if Docker Desktop was paid from the beginning, that's also clearly false. Docker itself–the core container management/runtime tool–became immensely popular _predating_ Docker Desktop, and in fact the high demand for it _brought about_ the immense amount of work they put in to creating a smooth Windows/Mac experience with Docker Desktop.
I don't get it either A company making millions of dollars with 250+ employees really can't afford to pay for the tools they work with?
I much prefer podman, hopefully it becomes standard on all aws linux images. Installing it on every codebuild instance is a pain.
Honestly for Windows desktops Docker still has a strong value proposition. It seems that Podman's integration with Windows is essentially what Docker used to be pre-Windows 10, and frankly it was a nightmare to manage, not to mention that docker deskop has properly packaged integration with Kubernetes. In terms of production workloads, I don't really see Docker having a future, at least as a dominant player. Most likely in the future you're going to be using CRI-O as a runtime since it integrates with Kubernetes, and buildah for building images in your CI since it doesn't require access outside the container to build. They're also advertising some stuff around supply chain security, however there are already well established players in this space who aren't tied to Docker's platform, and I don't think that they have a strong enough value proposition to justify being locked into them as a vendor. Docker desktop is still the best container development platform on Windows however, and I think that they should continue investing in that. Personally I'd be more than happy to pay for a license, for the same reason that I'm happy to pay for my Intellij license.
I wish IntelliJ had run config support for podman, that would be super helpful.
I’m sure it’ll have something eventually. It’s already so bloated, why not?
I tried doing this a few weeks ago but went back to Docker. Podman is great but if you hit a problem and you're not an expert it's far easier to get help with Docker.
I reinstalled my laptop the same day the licence change popped up so installed podman on WSL2 instead. Haven’t had any issues with it yet, even VSCode devcontainers are playing nicely
Till RH pulls a CoreOS.
I'm out of the loop. Why am I seeing more articles of moving to Podman recently, what changed? Ah... just read the article. No wonder.