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Hi all, Docker founder here. It appears that the explanation in the pull request is not very clear. Sorry about that. We didn't expect the PR to be the first th

by shykes 10y ago

Hi all, Docker founder here. It appears that the explanation in the pull request is not very clear. Sorry about that. We didn't expect the PR to be the first thing people read: there is a new website at mobyproject.org. Unfortunately Github is struggling under the load, and I can't update the PR text to clarify. Here is an updated version with some clarifications: <<< Docker is transitioning all of its open source collaborations to the Moby project going forward. During the transition, all open source activity should continue as usual. IMPORTANT NOTE: if you are a Docker user, this does not change anything. Docker CE continues to exist as a downstream open-source product, with exactly the same interface, packages and release cycle. This change is about the upstream development of the components of Docker, and making that process more open and modular. Moby is not a replacement for Docker: it's a framework to help system engineers build platforms like Docker out of many components. We use Moby to build Docker, but you can use it to build specialized systems other than Docker. You can learn more at http://mobyproject.org http://mobyproject.org We are proposing the following list of changes: - splitting up the engine into more open components - removing the docker UI, SDK etc to keep them in the Docker org - clarifying that the project is not limited to the engine, but to the assembly of all the individual components of the Docker platform - open-source new tools & components which we currently use to assemble the Docker product, but could benefit the community - defining an open, community-centric governance inspired by the Fedora project (a very successful example of balancing the needs of the community with the constraints of the primary corporate sponsor) >>> EDIT: I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions here, if it helps clarify.

alsadi 10y ago
Tell us more about trademark and branding guidelines. What do you allow a downstream implemented by others to be called without requiring trademark fees ex by parties similar to amazon (public cloud) or ovh (data center) or redhat/fedora (software vendor) and even nvidia (cuda docker-like) . For example fedora and firefox has strict trademark policy eventhough they are opensource. Can I call my tool moby-something?
- shykes 10y ago
  For the Docker trademark, we will adopt guidelines similar to other open-source products, such as Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Moby, there is no need for a strict trademark policy because Moby is a "meta-platform". In other words downstreams don't run Moby: they build their own specialized platform with moby. So they don't need to worry about the Moby trademark anymore than they need to worry about the trademark of gcc or make. Anyone who uses Moby to build their platform will be more than welcome to say "built with Moby".
  - ibotty 10y ago
    That still does not answer whether it's possible to name a project "moby-foo" for, say, an integration of moby with foo.
    - shykes 10y ago
      Sure, I don't see why that would be a problem. As a rule of thumb, Moby should follow the usual conventions of community open-source projects.
nobodyorother 10y ago
> Unfortunately Github is struggling under the load What the flip did you do? They held off the Great Firewall! /impressed
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  Yea that threw me off too, what is going on o_O
  - shykes 10y ago
    I think it's a combination of moving one of the most active repositories on github, opening a very high-profile pull request, and having that pull request linked from the #1 story on Hacker News.
ilovecaching 10y ago
Do you know that keeping your users in a constant state of confusion is not the way to convince them that you're building a stable and secure product? Also, isn't it kind of ironic that you built your company on OSS and then invited a well known destroyer of OSS onto your main stage? Plus, I want my DockerCon money back. What exactly did you announce besides multi-stage builds at the general sessions that is actually benefiting Docker users? I don't care about your plumbing and constant rebranding, other than finding it very discouraging, I want to know what you're actually doing with your product this year. I guess nothing.
- vkat 10y ago
  I thought LinuxKit and InfraKit were great announcements.
  - maskz 10y ago
    Me too, and I still think it is actually.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Also, isn't it kind of ironic that you built your company on OSS and then invited a well known destroyer of OSS onto your main stage? I think I missed this; who are you referring to? I scrolled through the list and didn't recognize anyone that I would consider a "destroyer of OSS" so I'm not sure if I missed something, if you're just exaggerating or a little bit of both.
  - ilovecaching 10y ago
    I'm not going to name names, if it's not obvious go watch the last general session keynote. Edit: See my response below
    - alsadi 10y ago
      Link?
    - 10y ago
dastbe 10y ago
Very tangential: do you have any concerns about or plans to buy mobyproject.com? seems like its oscillating between parked domain and shady ads.
- shykes 10y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, we'll look into getting that domain if we can.
registrator 10y ago
If moby is not a replacement for docker (your words), why does docker/docker redirect to moby/moby (your actions)?
- shykes 10y ago
  We moved the repository because the first task of the Moby project is to break up the Docker engine monolith into smaller components, and spin them out into separate repos. We started doing that with libnetwork, containerd, distribution etc, but we are not done yet. docker/docker is where that monolith lives, and where its maintainers work. Once the componentization is complete, Moby will be an integration repository, with the tools necessary to combine upstream components into a complete system. We will use it to assemble Docker, and other system builders can use it to assemble alternatives to Docker.
  - rattray 10y ago
    The Moby project as outlined sounds great. This redirect will probably prove disruptive, confusing, and frustrating to a lot of people. I assume it's too late now, but you might consider asking github if you can revert to allow github.com/docker/docker to remain as it was for a time, and allow moby/moby to gradually pull in the actual code. Perhaps there are technical reasons this would be infeasible. The github landing page serves as valuable marketing, branding, and social-proof (stars, etc) even if most folks don't end up looking at the code there.
zabcik 10y ago
So moby now uses containerd, which I guess is not related to systemd even though systemd also has its own container system. Are there any components to moby that are OSS and a part of the linux stack or is this whole endeavor to break away from linux dependencies?
- shykes 10y ago
  > So moby now uses containerd Correct. Moby uses containerd because Docker uses containerd. > which I guess is not related to systemd You guessed correctly. > even though systemd also has its own container system Correct I believe systemd uses a tool called nspawn to isolate processes in containers. We don't use systemd/nspawn, but I think it would be a cool customization to build a Moby assembly that uses systemd. > Are there any components to moby that are OSS All Moby components are open-source. > and a part of the linux stack All Moby components run great on Linux. > or is this whole endeavor to break away from linux dependencies? Moby works great with Linux and will continue to. In fact you can build a complete custom Linux system with Moby, thanks to LinuxKit. (But you can also target an existing Linux system, LinuxKit is optional).
  - riquito 10y ago
    If Moby depends on LinuxKit, why the LinuxKit's README ask you to build the Moby tool as first thing, and all the examples imply using moby? Shouldn't LinuxKit be agnostic of the existence of Moby?
    - V99 10y ago
      I think the additional confusion here is that LinuxKit (or at least the resulting OS that powers Docker for Mac/Win/etc) used to be internally called Moby, so the build tool just hasn't been renamed.
    - justincormack 10y ago
      You can use the LinuxKit components independently, but right now the easy way is to use the Moby tool. Sorry about the confusion though, we are trying to make it clearer. Here is a summary we wrote earlier for Moby https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker
zobzu 10y ago
Is there a "im stupid and didnt follow news, here's why docker is being renamed to moby:"? Such as "docker reputation for security became too terrible" or whatever.
- ascendantlogic 10y ago
  Why would you lead with a legitimate question and then finish with an outright insult?
  - stephenr 10y ago
    How can software be insulted? Software doesn't have feelings.
    - andrewguenther 10y ago
      This logic is the reason it sucks to be an open-source maintainer.
      - stephenr 10y ago
        The original comment being discussed, suggested that Docker is terrible from a security point of view, which frankly I agree with. Docker only got root privilege isolation (i.e. don't run every container as root on the host) a little over 12 months ago. Their entire approach seems to be "build whatever buzzword batshit crazy idea cool kids want", with "hey is this shit stable, or even remotely secure?" way down the list of questions even considered during development. Also: if someone is an OSS maintainer, and their response to bug reports is as bad as Dockers have been, sorry but they deserve to feel bad. The "you" I refer to below is a mythical OSS maintainer, not you specifically, @andrewguenther. Maintaining software doesn't automatically remove any responsibilities you have to maintain the community. If there are huge issues with the software, you have two choices: - acknowledge and identify a plan to solve the issues. In this case, assuming the issues are resolved in a timely fashion, I would expect people to remain courteous. - treat the community as shit, ignore security concerns, and never fix fundamental bugs. In this instance, you should expect people to call your project out for the piece of shit it clearly is. Let's also be clear here: we're not talking about some tin-pot project with 2 guys hacking away on their lunch breaks to find a cure for cancer, who are being told "this is crap". Docker is developed by Docker Inc, a company that received nearly $170M in venture capital investment just in 2014-2015, and apparently makes several million a year in revenue.
frik 10y ago
So all books about Docker are now outdated. What will happen with hub.docker.com? Is store.docker.com the replacement? Or will both coexist? Which one will be hosted on mobyproject.org ?
- shykes 10y ago
  Moby is not a replacement for Docker. It's a new upstream project for developing and assembling Docker. If you're a Docker user, nothing changes for you. Docker Hub and Docker Store are also unaffected.
- workerIbe 10y ago
  Books are for history, fiction and resume's.
crb 10y ago
Hey Solomon, here are some 'starters for 10': - Who will be able to use the Docker trademark? If someone built a fork of Docker CE from Moby, can they still call it Docker? What about distribution packagers? - Right now a single binary ('docker') is used to build images and runs clusters (among other things). As the monolith is broken down, will the new binaries still be named/branded 'docker'? Will there be rules about packaging only some of them? Will Docker CE/EE still have a single binary for all purposes?
- shykes 10y ago
  > Who will be able to use the Docker trademark? Docker. > If someone built a fork of Docker CE from Moby, can they still call it Docker? No. > What about distribution packagers? We're still working this out, with the guidance of a few distro packagers. There will most likely be a change of some sort, but don't want to rush anything until we are certain that it won't break users. > Right now a single binary ('docker') is used to build images and runs clusters (among other things). As the monolith is broken down, will the new binaries still be named/branded 'docker'? Yes. The same 'docker' binary will continue to exist. We are going to spin it out into its own repository under the docker github org. It will only act as a client, and we will encourage the development of a healthy ecosystem of alternative clients. > Will there be rules about packaging only some of them? Basically only Docker can create something called "Docker". Everything else will be regular open-source project rules: build, patch, package any way you want. > Will Docker CE/EE still have a single binary for all purposes? It depends on the target platform. Docker for Linux is a deb or rpm package with several binaries. Docker for AWS is a Cloudformation template. Docker for Mac is a Mac application with a very complex array of components built in. etc.
zacblazic 10y ago
Many people really love the name Docker. Could you explain the reasoning behind the need for a new name? I ask this because would it not have been a better choice to name the other releases differently. For example: Docker (docker/docker) = open source development. Docker CE (docker/docker-community) = free product release Docker EE (docker/docker-enterprise) = commercial product release based on Docker CE (private). The components that the monolith is being broken into could just live beside the other repos in the docker organization: docker/component-1 docker/component-2 docker/component-3 Thoughts?
- shykes 10y ago
  We're separating the upstream open-source project, and the downstream open-source product under 2 different names, because a lot of people in the open-source community asked us to. It's a common concern in the free software community that having an open-source project too tightly coupled to a single company's product is a bad thing. Moving the upstream open-source project into Moby, and keeping the downstream open-source product into Docker, solves that problem.
  - Steeeve 10y ago
    I for one think it's fantastic that you were open to modeling the project in this way. It seems to me that there is a lot of hostility thrown at Docker in this thread because people assumed the worst based on a comment in a pull request. This is a good thing for Docker and a good thing for the Docker community and containerization in general.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - uboontoo 10y ago
    Wouldn't it be better to leave the open source project where it was, and move the product elsewhere?
fpp 10y ago
Are you not concerned that this move (relabeling the open source version different from how the product is known to the broader public) might further diminish the number of contributors that are now already down 50% / back to 2014 levels? see https://www.openhub.net/p/docker https://www.openhub.net/p/docker for statistics on that.
- shykes 10y ago
  Those stats are wrong. The project has grown massively since 2014 and continues to grow. My guess is that you are looking at the stats for a single repo, when we have broken up the project (and its contribution flow) into many smaller repos. To answer your question: we think this move will accelerate the growth of the project, because it addresses the two most common concerns from contributors: 1) that the project is too monolithic, and 2) that it's too tied to the Docker product and company.
  - frightening 10y ago
    > that it's too tied to the Docker product and company That's good news. So you're setting up some sort of foundation so that Docker is no longer a gatekeeper for the upstream stuff? I didn't see that in the announcement.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      They're essentially attempting to distinguish their commercial offerings from the upstream open-source project. They are cornering the name "Docker" for themselves since it has a lot of name recognition. This has pros and cons. Red Hat and Mozilla both learned they had to be aggressive with trademarks, as people were distributing sabotaged builds under their product names. That's why Firefox in Debian is called IceWeasel, for example; any Firefox build that incorporates external patches (or even one that is built with unofficial options, iirc) must not be called Firefox (barring a waiver from the Mozilla Foundation). This allows Mozilla to pursue people who are distributing contaminated builds of "Firefox". Changing posture on the Docker trademark will make the arguments of Docker Inc. more persuasive should they find themselves needing to make use of the same sort of remedy. It will also make a separate upstream so that Docker will now be based off the "Moby Framework". If Docker Inc. becomes defunct, "Moby" will be an separate project that lost its primary sponsor, not a defunct project bearing the name of a dead company. The cons are that it's probably a signal that Docker is going to continue working to monetize aggressively, potentially including spurious legal threats that limit the discoverability of competitors and vendors of alternate tooling. For example, it's possible that Kubernetes will no longer work "with Docker" but "with Moby", and the only orchestration for "Docker" will be docker-swarm. It's also a potential signal that Docker plans to gear more of its work toward its souped-up closed-source distribution available to paying customers only. The other pro is that Docker as a product totally sucks, so their alienating people in the community will drive users to other solutions that suck less. I keep hoping the containerization fad will go back in the bottle, and while unlikely, this diminishes faith in it since Docker == containers to a lot of people, so that's good.
lewq 10y ago
Together with Solomon and a core group of maintainers, we drafted some words to clarify the relationship between Moby and Docker at the Moby Summit here at DockerCon. We're updating the website at mobyproject.org to include this text as well. Docker is, and will remain, a open source product that lets you build, ship and run containers. It is staying exactly the same from a user's perspective. Users can download Docker from the docker.com website. Work has been ongoing to break Docker into modular components for some time, with runc and containerd as examples. Containerd for example has been donated to the CNCF. We are now completing this work with the goal being that the monolithic docker repo eventually ceases to exist, instead being assembled from a set of components. Moby is a project which provides a "Lego set" of dozens of components, the framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems, and a place for all container enthusiasts to experiment and exchange ideas. Docker the product will be assembled from components that are packaged by the Moby project. The Moby project provides a command-line tool called moby which assembles components. Currently it assembles bootable OS images, but soon it will also be used by Docker for assembling Docker out of components, many of which will be independent projects. As the Docker Engine is split up into multiple components the Moby project will also be the home for those components until a more appropriate location is found.
- chanezon 10y ago
  Thank you Luke! I've pushed it on the Moby website https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker
mintplant 10y ago
Could you provide a succinct, up-to-date explanation of what constitutes "Docker" as a product?

by shykes 10y ago

alsadi 10y ago

Tell us more about trademark and branding guidelines. What do you allow a downstream implemented by others to be called without requiring trademark fees ex by parties similar to amazon (public cloud) or ovh (data center) or redhat/fedora (software vendor) and even nvidia (cuda docker-like) . For example fedora and firefox has strict trademark policy eventhough they are opensource. Can I call my tool moby-something?

shykes 10y ago
For the Docker trademark, we will adopt guidelines similar to other open-source products, such as Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For Moby, there is no need for a strict trademark policy because Moby is a "meta-platform". In other words downstreams don't run Moby: they build their own specialized platform with moby. So they don't need to worry about the Moby trademark anymore than they need to worry about the trademark of gcc or make. Anyone who uses Moby to build their platform will be more than welcome to say "built with Moby".
- ibotty 10y ago
  That still does not answer whether it's possible to name a project "moby-foo" for, say, an integration of moby with foo.
  - shykes 10y ago
    Sure, I don't see why that would be a problem. As a rule of thumb, Moby should follow the usual conventions of community open-source projects.

nobodyorother 10y ago

> Unfortunately Github is struggling under the load What the flip did you do? They held off the Great Firewall! /impressed

notheguyouthink 10y ago
Yea that threw me off too, what is going on o_O
- shykes 10y ago
  I think it's a combination of moving one of the most active repositories on github, opening a very high-profile pull request, and having that pull request linked from the #1 story on Hacker News.

ilovecaching 10y ago

Do you know that keeping your users in a constant state of confusion is not the way to convince them that you're building a stable and secure product? Also, isn't it kind of ironic that you built your company on OSS and then invited a well known destroyer of OSS onto your main stage? Plus, I want my DockerCon money back. What exactly did you announce besides multi-stage builds at the general sessions that is actually benefiting Docker users? I don't care about your plumbing and constant rebranding, other than finding it very discouraging, I want to know what you're actually doing with your product this year. I guess nothing.

vkat 10y ago
I thought LinuxKit and InfraKit were great announcements.
- maskz 10y ago
  Me too, and I still think it is actually.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Also, isn't it kind of ironic that you built your company on OSS and then invited a well known destroyer of OSS onto your main stage? I think I missed this; who are you referring to? I scrolled through the list and didn't recognize anyone that I would consider a "destroyer of OSS" so I'm not sure if I missed something, if you're just exaggerating or a little bit of both.
- ilovecaching 10y ago
  I'm not going to name names, if it's not obvious go watch the last general session keynote. Edit: See my response below
  - alsadi 10y ago
    Link?
  - 10y ago

dastbe 10y ago

Very tangential: do you have any concerns about or plans to buy mobyproject.com? seems like its oscillating between parked domain and shady ads.

shykes 10y ago
Thanks for the heads up, we'll look into getting that domain if we can.

registrator 10y ago

If moby is not a replacement for docker (your words), why does docker/docker redirect to moby/moby (your actions)?

shykes 10y ago
We moved the repository because the first task of the Moby project is to break up the Docker engine monolith into smaller components, and spin them out into separate repos. We started doing that with libnetwork, containerd, distribution etc, but we are not done yet. docker/docker is where that monolith lives, and where its maintainers work. Once the componentization is complete, Moby will be an integration repository, with the tools necessary to combine upstream components into a complete system. We will use it to assemble Docker, and other system builders can use it to assemble alternatives to Docker.
- rattray 10y ago
  The Moby project as outlined sounds great. This redirect will probably prove disruptive, confusing, and frustrating to a lot of people. I assume it's too late now, but you might consider asking github if you can revert to allow github.com/docker/docker to remain as it was for a time, and allow moby/moby to gradually pull in the actual code. Perhaps there are technical reasons this would be infeasible. The github landing page serves as valuable marketing, branding, and social-proof (stars, etc) even if most folks don't end up looking at the code there.

zabcik 10y ago

So moby now uses containerd, which I guess is not related to systemd even though systemd also has its own container system. Are there any components to moby that are OSS and a part of the linux stack or is this whole endeavor to break away from linux dependencies?

shykes 10y ago
> So moby now uses containerd Correct. Moby uses containerd because Docker uses containerd. > which I guess is not related to systemd You guessed correctly. > even though systemd also has its own container system Correct I believe systemd uses a tool called nspawn to isolate processes in containers. We don't use systemd/nspawn, but I think it would be a cool customization to build a Moby assembly that uses systemd. > Are there any components to moby that are OSS All Moby components are open-source. > and a part of the linux stack All Moby components run great on Linux. > or is this whole endeavor to break away from linux dependencies? Moby works great with Linux and will continue to. In fact you can build a complete custom Linux system with Moby, thanks to LinuxKit. (But you can also target an existing Linux system, LinuxKit is optional).
- riquito 10y ago
  If Moby depends on LinuxKit, why the LinuxKit's README ask you to build the Moby tool as first thing, and all the examples imply using moby? Shouldn't LinuxKit be agnostic of the existence of Moby?
  - V99 10y ago
    I think the additional confusion here is that LinuxKit (or at least the resulting OS that powers Docker for Mac/Win/etc) used to be internally called Moby, so the build tool just hasn't been renamed.
  - justincormack 10y ago
    You can use the LinuxKit components independently, but right now the easy way is to use the Moby tool. Sorry about the confusion though, we are trying to make it clearer. Here is a summary we wrote earlier for Moby https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker

zobzu 10y ago

Is there a "im stupid and didnt follow news, here's why docker is being renamed to moby:"? Such as "docker reputation for security became too terrible" or whatever.

ascendantlogic 10y ago
Why would you lead with a legitimate question and then finish with an outright insult?
- stephenr 10y ago
  How can software be insulted? Software doesn't have feelings.
  - andrewguenther 10y ago
    This logic is the reason it sucks to be an open-source maintainer.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      The original comment being discussed, suggested that Docker is terrible from a security point of view, which frankly I agree with. Docker only got root privilege isolation (i.e. don't run every container as root on the host) a little over 12 months ago. Their entire approach seems to be "build whatever buzzword batshit crazy idea cool kids want", with "hey is this shit stable, or even remotely secure?" way down the list of questions even considered during development. Also: if someone is an OSS maintainer, and their response to bug reports is as bad as Dockers have been, sorry but they deserve to feel bad. The "you" I refer to below is a mythical OSS maintainer, not you specifically, @andrewguenther. Maintaining software doesn't automatically remove any responsibilities you have to maintain the community. If there are huge issues with the software, you have two choices: - acknowledge and identify a plan to solve the issues. In this case, assuming the issues are resolved in a timely fashion, I would expect people to remain courteous. - treat the community as shit, ignore security concerns, and never fix fundamental bugs. In this instance, you should expect people to call your project out for the piece of shit it clearly is. Let's also be clear here: we're not talking about some tin-pot project with 2 guys hacking away on their lunch breaks to find a cure for cancer, who are being told "this is crap". Docker is developed by Docker Inc, a company that received nearly $170M in venture capital investment just in 2014-2015, and apparently makes several million a year in revenue.

frik 10y ago

So all books about Docker are now outdated. What will happen with hub.docker.com? Is store.docker.com the replacement? Or will both coexist? Which one will be hosted on mobyproject.org ?

shykes 10y ago
Moby is not a replacement for Docker. It's a new upstream project for developing and assembling Docker. If you're a Docker user, nothing changes for you. Docker Hub and Docker Store are also unaffected.
workerIbe 10y ago
Books are for history, fiction and resume's.

crb 10y ago

Hey Solomon, here are some 'starters for 10': - Who will be able to use the Docker trademark? If someone built a fork of Docker CE from Moby, can they still call it Docker? What about distribution packagers? - Right now a single binary ('docker') is used to build images and runs clusters (among other things). As the monolith is broken down, will the new binaries still be named/branded 'docker'? Will there be rules about packaging only some of them? Will Docker CE/EE still have a single binary for all purposes?

shykes 10y ago
> Who will be able to use the Docker trademark? Docker. > If someone built a fork of Docker CE from Moby, can they still call it Docker? No. > What about distribution packagers? We're still working this out, with the guidance of a few distro packagers. There will most likely be a change of some sort, but don't want to rush anything until we are certain that it won't break users. > Right now a single binary ('docker') is used to build images and runs clusters (among other things). As the monolith is broken down, will the new binaries still be named/branded 'docker'? Yes. The same 'docker' binary will continue to exist. We are going to spin it out into its own repository under the docker github org. It will only act as a client, and we will encourage the development of a healthy ecosystem of alternative clients. > Will there be rules about packaging only some of them? Basically only Docker can create something called "Docker". Everything else will be regular open-source project rules: build, patch, package any way you want. > Will Docker CE/EE still have a single binary for all purposes? It depends on the target platform. Docker for Linux is a deb or rpm package with several binaries. Docker for AWS is a Cloudformation template. Docker for Mac is a Mac application with a very complex array of components built in. etc.

zacblazic 10y ago

Many people really love the name Docker. Could you explain the reasoning behind the need for a new name? I ask this because would it not have been a better choice to name the other releases differently. For example: Docker (docker/docker) = open source development. Docker CE (docker/docker-community) = free product release Docker EE (docker/docker-enterprise) = commercial product release based on Docker CE (private). The components that the monolith is being broken into could just live beside the other repos in the docker organization: docker/component-1 docker/component-2 docker/component-3 Thoughts?

shykes 10y ago
We're separating the upstream open-source project, and the downstream open-source product under 2 different names, because a lot of people in the open-source community asked us to. It's a common concern in the free software community that having an open-source project too tightly coupled to a single company's product is a bad thing. Moving the upstream open-source project into Moby, and keeping the downstream open-source product into Docker, solves that problem.
- Steeeve 10y ago
  I for one think it's fantastic that you were open to modeling the project in this way. It seems to me that there is a lot of hostility thrown at Docker in this thread because people assumed the worst based on a comment in a pull request. This is a good thing for Docker and a good thing for the Docker community and containerization in general.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- uboontoo 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be better to leave the open source project where it was, and move the product elsewhere?

fpp 10y ago

Are you not concerned that this move (relabeling the open source version different from how the product is known to the broader public) might further diminish the number of contributors that are now already down 50% / back to 2014 levels? see https://www.openhub.net/p/docker https://www.openhub.net/p/docker for statistics on that.

shykes 10y ago
Those stats are wrong. The project has grown massively since 2014 and continues to grow. My guess is that you are looking at the stats for a single repo, when we have broken up the project (and its contribution flow) into many smaller repos. To answer your question: we think this move will accelerate the growth of the project, because it addresses the two most common concerns from contributors: 1) that the project is too monolithic, and 2) that it's too tied to the Docker product and company.
- frightening 10y ago
  > that it's too tied to the Docker product and company That's good news. So you're setting up some sort of foundation so that Docker is no longer a gatekeeper for the upstream stuff? I didn't see that in the announcement.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    They're essentially attempting to distinguish their commercial offerings from the upstream open-source project. They are cornering the name "Docker" for themselves since it has a lot of name recognition. This has pros and cons. Red Hat and Mozilla both learned they had to be aggressive with trademarks, as people were distributing sabotaged builds under their product names. That's why Firefox in Debian is called IceWeasel, for example; any Firefox build that incorporates external patches (or even one that is built with unofficial options, iirc) must not be called Firefox (barring a waiver from the Mozilla Foundation). This allows Mozilla to pursue people who are distributing contaminated builds of "Firefox". Changing posture on the Docker trademark will make the arguments of Docker Inc. more persuasive should they find themselves needing to make use of the same sort of remedy. It will also make a separate upstream so that Docker will now be based off the "Moby Framework". If Docker Inc. becomes defunct, "Moby" will be an separate project that lost its primary sponsor, not a defunct project bearing the name of a dead company. The cons are that it's probably a signal that Docker is going to continue working to monetize aggressively, potentially including spurious legal threats that limit the discoverability of competitors and vendors of alternate tooling. For example, it's possible that Kubernetes will no longer work "with Docker" but "with Moby", and the only orchestration for "Docker" will be docker-swarm. It's also a potential signal that Docker plans to gear more of its work toward its souped-up closed-source distribution available to paying customers only. The other pro is that Docker as a product totally sucks, so their alienating people in the community will drive users to other solutions that suck less. I keep hoping the containerization fad will go back in the bottle, and while unlikely, this diminishes faith in it since Docker == containers to a lot of people, so that's good.

lewq 10y ago

Together with Solomon and a core group of maintainers, we drafted some words to clarify the relationship between Moby and Docker at the Moby Summit here at DockerCon. We're updating the website at mobyproject.org to include this text as well. Docker is, and will remain, a open source product that lets you build, ship and run containers. It is staying exactly the same from a user's perspective. Users can download Docker from the docker.com website. Work has been ongoing to break Docker into modular components for some time, with runc and containerd as examples. Containerd for example has been donated to the CNCF. We are now completing this work with the goal being that the monolithic docker repo eventually ceases to exist, instead being assembled from a set of components. Moby is a project which provides a "Lego set" of dozens of components, the framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems, and a place for all container enthusiasts to experiment and exchange ideas. Docker the product will be assembled from components that are packaged by the Moby project. The Moby project provides a command-line tool called moby which assembles components. Currently it assembles bootable OS images, but soon it will also be used by Docker for assembling Docker out of components, many of which will be independent projects. As the Docker Engine is split up into multiple components the Moby project will also be the home for those components until a more appropriate location is found.

chanezon 10y ago
Thank you Luke! I've pushed it on the Moby website https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker https://mobyproject.org/#moby-and-docker

mintplant 10y ago

Could you provide a succinct, up-to-date explanation of what constitutes "Docker" as a product?