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Docker Is Raising Funding at $1.3B Valuation

321 points by moritzplassnig 9y ago

gue5t 9y ago
Imagine the "value" investors could make if they cordoned off every useful composition of Linux kernel features into a "product" like this.
- gaius 9y ago
  Yeah, this is like Red Hat spinning off RPM as a separate business...
  - dman 9y ago
    Dont give them any ideas!
- dboreham 9y ago
  Historically the valuable software products were those that (somehow) accreted a "Priesthood" who both promoted their use and restricted widespread understanding (hence solidifying their position as the high priests). I'm thinking here of : Netware, Oracle (the RDBMS) and Weblogic as examples. I think what's going on with Docker is that a Priesthood is being created essentially without the product, or rather the product as a secondary matter. Quite a clever business trick if they pull it off.
- InTheArena 9y ago
  As someone who did containers with LXC before docker, I think your characterization is off. The value in Docker isn't in the kernel features, but instead in the user space. Ever try Openshift 1/2, as painful as that was it was still better then rolling your own. Docker's big problem isn't what's below them, it's whats above them. Their monetizing strategy has to involve the fortune 500, and right now, all of the momentum in that area is being eaten by Google with Kubernetes. Kubernetes has a very vocal faction that wants nothing to do with Docker, and replace it with something else. Docker has plenty of challenges, but they have delivered significant value, most of which is still open source.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Your comment could be interpreted similarly. If the effort for k8s to move away from docker is minimal, that implies there wasn't much of anything novel in it.
    - InTheArena 9y ago
      It’s not minimal. There is a incredible amount of effort going into this task.
  - squeed 9y ago
    Indeed, especially as a company that has a reputation for producing unstable APIs that break between minor versions. This is a team that seems to think it is acceptable to return ASCII art and backspaces in their container management APIs: https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1214 https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1214 So, you're right, but they have a tainted reputation. I wish them all the best, but I don't have high hopes.
    - rrdharan 9y ago
      I see the backspaces (as per that issue) but where's the ASCII art? EDIT: nevermind, found it via one of the linked issues: https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1237 https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1237
    - shykes 9y ago
      > especially as a company that has a reputation for producing unstable APIs that break between minor versions. I wish people stopped repeating this without verifying it first. Here is a list of past breaking changes in the Docker API: https://docs.docker.com/engine/breaking_changes/ https://docs.docker.com/engine/breaking_changes/
- pdog 9y ago
  Docker built a better mousetrap. FreeBSD had jails in 2000. Linux had namespaces and cgroups for years. No one cared until Docker came up with containers in 2013.
  - idorosen 9y ago
    OpenVZ, user-mode Linux, and others were very widespread with web hosting and VPS providers since mid-/early-2000s (and probably a little earlier than that too). Docker didn't invent containers, but they were a first mover (as far as I know) in the current flavor of "PaaS" or hosted "non-frameworks" (i.e. environments that don't force you into the hosting provider's userland choices such as library versions, etc.). It's easy to dismiss it as a better mousetrap, but it was an inflection point in the same way puppet and cfengine before it were inflection points in configuration management and "infrastructure as code"... Still, I find the Docker daemon massively invasive and too much of a potential gaping security hole. I wish it was more modular and less of it ran privileged/as root, and don't run it on anything sensitive as a result. Usually properly configuring a box and relying on existing process and other forms of isolation (including namespaces) is good enough, especially with good package management. Great for UX/workflow tooling in a dev VM though!
    - shykes 9y ago
      > I wish it was more modular and less of it ran privileged/as root Under the hood Docker has been heavily modularized. Check out https://containerd.io https://containerd.io which handles all the low-level container operations in a lightweight daemon with way less footprint. You can use it standalone without pulling in the rest of the Docker platform.
  - moosingin3space 9y ago
    My personal opinion on this is that Docker's application of Linux namespaces+cgroups happened to solve a specific problem - reducing differences between prod and dev and doing stateless deployment - in a way that is pretty simple and didn't break people's expectations for how Linux works. Prior to that, namespaces and cgroups didn't have a "killer app".
SandersAK 9y ago
get that parkour. get that parkooooouuuurrrr!
jdoliner 9y ago
There's a couple of things in this article that I don't think are true. I don't think Ben Golub was a co-founder of Docker. Maybe he counts as a co-founder of Docker but not of Dotcloud? That seems a bit weird though. I also am pretty sure Docker's headquarters are in San Francisco, not Palo Alto.
- pbiggar 9y ago
  Cofounder is a title, like any other. It doesn't just refer to "I was there at the start of the corporate entity". If they're calling Ben a cofounder, then they certainly mean it. You're right that he wasn't there at the start of Dotcloud, but that doesn't mean that he didn't have (or didn't earn) the title of cofounder of Docker. Ben's linkedin has "co-founder" of on it, so it certainly wasn't the article making a mistake.
  - eldavido 9y ago
    Cofounder is sort of nebulous, it doesn't carry any official legal authority and isn't an "officer" of the corporation in most senses, though it has a lot of cachet in SV. I view it as a relatively cheap bargaining chip that can burnish a person's reputation, but has little descriptive value in terms of what someone actually did to move the business forward.
    - pbiggar 9y ago
      I disagree. You're not exactly handing the title out willy-nilly. If they're calling Ben a cofounder, I'll be that has significant meaning to them.
      - eldavido 9y ago
        Sure, but it's a lot different from being a CEO, shareholder, member of the board, or high-level corporate officer. "Founder" is something you can bestow retroactively, not so much with "CEO". And I'm seeing all sorts of companies hand out titles like "Founding Engineer", "Founding Developer", etc. with the same chump-change 100k/0.1% option packages as before.
new299 9y ago
I'm so curious to understand how you pitch Docker at a 1.3BUSD valuation. With I assume a potential valuation of ~10BUSD to give the investors a decent exit? Does anyone have an insight into this? Looks like Github's last valuation was at 2BUSD. That also seems high, but I can understand this somewhat better as they have revenue, and seem to be much more widely used/accepted than Docker. In addition to that I can see how Github's social features are valuable, and how they might grow into other markets. I don't see this for Docker...
- jasode 9y ago
  >Does anyone have an insight into this? I don't have insight but I'm guessing the valuation comes from the prospects of enterprise sales.[1] Also, Docker (the company) isn't staying still. We have to assume they will evolve to add future upmarket services on top of Docker that companies will pay for. Investors would see the PowerPoint slides for those future products but we as outsiders don't. Maybe an analogous situation would be the Red Hat multi-billion valuation even though Linux kernel itself is free and open source. [1] https://www.docker.com/pricing https://www.docker.com/pricing
  - programd 9y ago
    Their enterprise pricing is per node. So if enough companies sign on to this, ever box/VM they put docker on brings Docker Inc. revenue. I'm sure at large scale this will be more of a flat rate negotiated deal ($XX,XXX per year) but still that's a lot of potential cash on the table. The risk of course is that the nobody will want to pay per-node and the community will just invest in the open source container ecosystem and replicate the Enterprise features with plugins and forks. Still, the market might be big enough that they can become another Red Hat just based on support and stewardship revenue.
    - new299 9y ago
      Becoming another Redhat wouldn't be enough to justify investment at this valuation though would it? They need an upside potential 5 to 10x higher than Redhat's current valuation.
baq 9y ago
they should file for an ICO, dockercoin or containotoken would sell like hotcakes. /s
jaequery 9y ago
why are they called Software Maker?
- nxc18 9y ago
  Non-tech people have no idea what Docker is. Still even a lot of the less up-to-date people know what it is and I suspect vanishingly few people (relative to something like GitHub) really understand it beyond the mechanics of the commands. Also the intentional re-use of shipping verbiage demands disambiguation.
  - PascLeRasc 9y ago
    I've had to use Docker before, and I still have no idea what it is. It's true that they love to say "virtualization" and "containerize" the same way the media loves "disavow" and "recuse".
    - chrisper 9y ago
      In the case of Docker, containers = prepackaged ready-to-use out of the box software. Basically, you run some software (e.g. mysql) inside a docker container and it comes with everything it needs preconfigured and installed (e.g. libraries, configurations,...). This makes it easy to: - Deploy to many places having the same environment - Update these programs easily (you just need to download and run a new container image) - Clean up easily by discarding the container I should probably also add that Docker is also a community to share these application images (containers).
    - samstave 9y ago
      I love that comparison!
- mperham 9y ago
  So they aren't confused with "Pants Maker"?
z3t4 9y ago
I dont understand containers. First you go to through great pain sharing and reusing libraries. Then you make a copy of all the libraries and the rest of the system for each program !?
- bognition 9y ago
  Its about creating and maintaining a clean environment. Conceptually they aren't that different than a VM just much lighter weight.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Well, we need to differentiate between application containers (Docker) and Linux containers (old:openVZ, new:LXD/LXC). Then there are application containers which are even more "limited," like Flatpack. I'd argue that only Linux containers are like VMs.
    - imhoguy 9y ago
      Docker was LXC wrapper in the past. Now it just handles cgroup stuff itself. You can run full system in the Docker but purists regard this as antipattern.
      - chrisper 9y ago
        I'd prefer LXD / LXC anyway. Sadly, LXD porting to Debian is a slow process.
  - dozzie 9y ago
    Except that it's not clean environment. Make it a properly built DEB or RPM package, and then we're starting (but just starting) to talk about clean. Note also that binary packages help with repeatable deployment that uses Docker, deployment tools (e.g. Ansible or Salt), configuration management tools (CFEngine, Puppet), even manual -- and mix of all these. Docker images only help with Docker deployment.
- 9y ago
throw2016 9y ago
Docker generated value from the LXC project, aufs, overlay, btrfs and a ton of open source projects yet few people know about these projects, their authors and in the case of the extremely poorly marketed LXC project even what it is thanks to negative marketing by the Docker ecosystem hellbent on 'owning containers'. Who is the author of aufs or overlayfs? Should these projects work with no recognition while VC funded companies with marketing funds swoop down and extract market value without giving anything back. How has Docker contributed back to all the projects it is critically dependent on? This does not seem like a sustainable open source model. A lot of critical problems around containers exist in places like layers, the kernel and these will not get fixed by Docker but aufs or overlayfs and kernel subsystems but given most don't even know the authors of these projects how will this work? There has been a lot of misleading marketing on Linux containers right from 2013 here on HN itself and one wishes there was more informed discussion that would correct some of this misinformation, which didn't happen.
- bostand 9y ago
  Docker is swimming in cash for some reason only people in SF understand. In the mean time LXD is developed by a single guy...
  - Godel_unicode 9y ago
    Is this really that hard to understand? Docker has marketing and developer evangelists etc. LXD is making software, Docker is selling a product.
- imhoguy 9y ago
  I would add cgroups concept in Linux kernel in general. You can run Docker images with small bash script and systemd-nspawn alone.
  - throw2016 9y ago
    Its namespaces. Cgroups can be used to limit any Linux processes and do not have anything in particular to do with containers. Userland container managers use it to limit mainly cpu and memory resources to the container processes. Its kernel namespaces that enable containers and allow one to launch a process in its own namespace(there are 5 namespaces containers use). LXC/LXD containers launch an init in this process so you get a more VM like environment. Docker does not launch an init so you run a single app process or a process manager if you need to run multiple processes. Systemd Nspawn is similar to LXC.
Steeeve 9y ago
The guy who came up with chroot in the first place is kicking himself.
- ibn_ibid 9y ago
  I think he's doin alright lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy
- neolefty 9y ago
  By analogy, there's a lot more to a Model T than an internal combustion engine.
slim 9y ago
Docker is funded by In-Q-Tel
- fapjacks 9y ago
  The shadow government is containerized.
- eatmyshorts 9y ago
  I'm very curious what your concern is in this? I understand the CIA interest and value in PayPal, Facebook, and Google. But what do they gain from Docker, other than as a simple investment? Backdoors or something?
  - api 9y ago
    I have no idea if the parent is correct or what, but just for the sake of argument I can see one issue here. Docker Hub is a massive centralized store of software. If Docker becomes The Way to deploy infrastructure and services, Docker Hub could theoretically trojanize the world. It would be a way of getting the kind of leverage over the Linux world that MS and Apple offer for their respective ecosystems.
    - auspex 9y ago
      You can run a private registry and build your own images.
ahallock 9y ago
Docker still has a long way to go in terms of local development ergonomics. Recently, I finally had my chance to on board a bunch of new devs and have them create their local environment using Docker Compose (we're working on a pretty standard Rails application). We were able to get the environments set up and the app running, but the networking is so slow to be pretty much unusable. Something is wrong with syncing the FS between docker and the host OS. We were using the latest Docker for Mac. If the out of the box experience is this bad, it's unsuitable for local development. I was actually embarrassed.
- aaronds 9y ago
  Have you tried https://github.com/EugenMayer/docker-sync https://github.com/EugenMayer/docker-sync ? I've had slow FS issues with docker on mac. Integrating docker-sync doesn't take long and should help you out.
  - ahallock 9y ago
    I haven't, but I recommended it to one of the devs and he claimed it 'crashed' docker. Need more investigation, but we shouldn't need tools like this; it should work by default.
    - aaronds 9y ago
      Agreed, and to my knowledge this is a known issue (I'm sure I've seen chatter regarding the problem on the docker forums/github). Nonetheless, with docker-sync I've been able to leverage all the benefits of docker-compose whilest mitigating those slow mounted fs issues, so for now I'm happy with it. At least you can configure it directly into your compose set up, so you don't need to spend time explaining it immediately when onboarding those new developers.
- ahallock 9y ago
  A few things to note: I wasn't using Docker for Mac, but a custom VirtualBox setup that took over a month to perfect. When I last tested Docker for Mac, the networking was really slow then, but I took a gamble that it had been fixed by now. I will give credit as to how easy it was to get the app running -- compose makes everything a snap. It's unfortunate that something is amiss with volumes/networking.
eldavido 9y ago
I wish people would stop talking about valuation this way, emphasizing the bullshit headline valuation. The reality is that (speculating), they probably issued a new class of stock, at $x/share, and that class of stock has all kinds of rights, provisions, protections, etc. that the others don't, and may or may not have any bearing whatsoever on what the other classes of shares are worth.
alexnewman 9y ago
It's time for the cash grabs before the economy implodes
raiyu 9y ago
Monetizing open source directly is a bit challenging because you end up stuck in the same service model as everyone else. Which is basically to sell various support contracts to the fortune 100-500. Forking a project into a enterprise (paid for) version and limiting those features in the original open source version, creates tension in the community, and usually isn't a model that leads to success. Converting an open source project directly into a paid for software or SaaS model is definitely the best route as it reduces head count and allows you to be a software company instead of a service company. Perhaps best captured by Github warpping git with an interface and community and then directly selling a SaaS subscription and eventually an enterprise hosted version that is still delivered on a subscription basis just behind the corporate firewall. Also of note is that Github didn't create git itself, and instead was done on the direct need that developers saw themselves, which means they thought what is the product I want, rather than, we built and maintain git, so let's do that and eventually monetize it.
foota 9y ago
My first reaction was that I was surprised it wasn't higher. My second reaction was incredulity at how ridiculous my first reaction was.
- derricgilling 9y ago
  They seem to be in a unique position to monetize with multiple models. Compared to something like Github, Docker and Docker Swarm has much more opportunity for large enterprise support contracts. Most companies feel that Docker is synonymous with containers, yet still don't fully understand the technology. Git already had a high adoption years before Github was around so developers were familiar with it (or other VCS) and didn't need to spend thousands of dollars to support a git repo. On the other hand, curious how much revenue DockerHub is bringing in and where they will plan on taking it. That model seems closer to Github. Will it be a newer way to discover new OS or even propriety images like how devs use Github?
  - adictator 9y ago
    Oh yes, I believe docker launched store.docker.com just to host proprietary images in a marketplace sort of setting.
- derricgilling 9y ago
  They seem to be in a unique position to monetize with multiple models. Compared to something like Github, Docker and Docker Swarm has much more opportunity for large enterprise support contracts. Most companies feel that Docker is synonymous with containers, yet still don't fully understand the technology. Git already had a high adoption years before Github was around so developers were familiar with it (or other VCS) and didn't need to spend thousands of dollars to support a git repo. On the other hand, curious how much revenue DockerHub is bringing in and where they will plan on taking it. That model seems closer to Github. Will it be a newer way to discover new OS or even propriety images like how devs use Github?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago
kev009 9y ago
Do they actually have any significant revenue? I love developer tools companies, but there are several tools upstarts that have no proven business model. They look like really bad gambles in terms of VC investment, unless you can get in early enough to unload to other fools.
- eatmyshorts 9y ago
  I don't know their numbers, but it has been reported that their 2016 revenue was north of $10m, and that their 2017 revenue is more than 2x that. This is just a guess, but I'd guess that they are seeing >300% year-over-year revenue growth, and that they're projected to see >$50m in 2017. I would guess 20x current revenue, so a $1.3b valuation would mean roughly $10m per month in July 2017 (starting from $2-3m in Jan 2017). If this is accurate, I'd be glad to invest in Docker at a $1.3b valuation.
  - kev009 9y ago
    That sounds very pie in the sky, I can't imagine them cleaning 10m a month.
muppetman 9y ago
Gosh, how did the Internet, services, etc every work without containers? Oh, that's right, perfectly.
- ralmeida 9y ago
  That may be true, but should we then stop trying to evolve technology? The idea of any advance is to either keep quality and reduce costs (time and money investment), or to improve quality. Since by your opinion, the Internet already works perfectly, the good Docker brings to the table is to keep it working perfectly, but requiring less resources (time and money) to do so.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    Heh. I am always amazed to see comments like muppetman's. Why get into technology if you don't like to see things improved? It reminds me of this bit from Douglas Adams: "1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
    - muppetman 9y ago
      My point was I don't see how containers have improved anything. Of course tech should be advanced. There's many things that have advanced tech. But I fail to see how containers are one of those things. But you're right, I guess I am just old and grumpy.
bane 9y ago
I feel like this is one of those valuations which makes sense contextually, but not based on any sort of business reality. Docker reminds me a lot of the PKZIP utilities. For those who don't remember, back in the late 80s the PKZIP utilities became a kind of defacto standard on non Unixes for file compression and decompression. The creator of the utilities was a guy named Phil Katz who meant to make money off of the tools, but as was the fashion at the time released them as basically feature complete shareware. Some people did register, and quite a few companies registered to maintain compliance so PKWare (the company) did make a bit of money, but most people didn't bother. Eventually the core functionality was simply built into modern Operating Systems and various compatible clones were released for everything under the sun. Amazingly the company is still around (and even selling PKZIP!) https://www.pkware.com/pkzip https://www.pkware.com/pkzip Katz turned out to be a tragic figure http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/S... But my point is, I know of many many (MANY) people using Docker in development and deployment and I know of nobody at all who's paying them money. I'm sure they exist, the make revenue from somewhere presumably, but they're basically just critical infrastructure at this point and just becoming an expected part of the OS, not a company.
- fermuch 9y ago
  A nice selling point for me is the registry. If you have a public image, it's totally free. If it's private, you can pay to use it privately in a team. Of course, you can mount your own (it's a docker image, after all), or you can use Google or Amazon to host it, but it is much easier to pay them to host, and you don't need to bother with storage, backups, or authentication. Setting up team permissions is as easy as sending an invitation from the panel.
  - gkop 9y ago
    Hmm, GKE's Container Registry also takes care of storage, backups, and authentication. Presumably Quay and Amazon's Container Registry do as well. What makes Docker, Inc.'s registry special?
  - nojvek 9y ago
contingencies 9y ago
I worked with LXC since 2009, then personally built a cloud provider agnostic workflow interface superior in scope to Docker in feature set[1] between about 2013-2014 as a side project to assist with my work (managing multi-DC, multi-jurisdiction, high security and availability infrastructure and CI/CD for a major cryptocurrency exchange). (Unfortunately I was not able to release that code because my employer wanted to keep it closed source, but the documentation[2] and early conception[3] has been online since early days.) I was also an early stage contributor to docker, providing security related issues and resolutions based upon my early LXC experience. Based upon the above experience, I firmly believe that Docker could be rewritten by a small team of programmers (~1-3) within a few month timeframe. [1] Docker has grown to add some of this now, but back then had none of it: multiple infrastructure providers (physical bare metal, external cloud providers, own cloud/cluster), normalized CI/CD workflow, pluggable FS layers (eg. use ZFS or LVM2 snapshots instead of AUFS - most development was done on ZFS), inter-service functional dependency, guaranteed-repeatable platform and service package builds (network fetches during package build process are cached)... [2] http://stani.sh/walter/cims/ http://stani.sh/walter/cims/ [3] http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/ http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/
- valarauca1 9y ago
  It effectively has been. Oracle, Sun, FreeBSD, RunC, OCI None are _as popular_ as docker. But many offer more features, or a flatly superior product. Docker _isnt good_. Docker is popular. Actually their constant breaking of compatibility makes me wonder why everyone continues to tolerate it.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    Docker _isnt good_. Docker is popular. Which means a popularity-based valuation is a house of cards.
    - SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
      Maybe. But there's also something to be said for generating popularity and mind share intentionally. It seems Docker has been very good at that part (and pretty good at the technical side too). Many wonderful, technically-superior-than-alternatives projects languish and die in obscurity, while its inferior counterpart wins the popularity/marketing contest.
locusofself 9y ago
I used docker for a while last year and attended Dockercon. I was really excited about it and thought it was going to solve many of my problems. But with how complicated my stack is, it just didn't make sense to use ultimately. I loved the idea of it, but in the end good old virtual machines and configuration management can basically do most of the same stuff. I guess if you want to pack your servers to the brim with processes and shave off whatever performance hit you get from KVM or XEN, I get it. But the idea of the filesystem layers and immutable images just kindof turned to a nightmare for me when I asked myself "how the hell am I going to update/patch this thing" Maybe I'm crazy, but after a lot of excitement it seemed more like an extra layer of tools to deal with more than anything.
- icelancer 9y ago
  This is unfortunately the conclusion I came to. Virtual machines locally and in the cloud just don't seem to be that much worse in any facet, and Docker (containers in general) seem to be far more complicated. I dunno.
  - locusofself 9y ago
    Learning Ansible really well proved far more valuable to my work life. I integrate lots stuff, stuff like OpenVPN, Asterisk, Freeswitch, stuff that can hardly be "contained" and still even work. Some stuff does not work in containers, and even if it does work, dealing with the weird filesystem mounts, "statelessness", locations of logs and other persistent data, and the ethos of just using 1 process per container and so on and so forth. Then think about deploying some complex legacy apps that have upgrade paths that involve changing database schemas and running shell scripts to migrate data. How are you going to reasonably do that with docker? It just hurt my brain to think about it. If you have the luxury of designing your app from the ground up and its not too complicated of a stack then I see how it is cool. But mostly if it saves you money on AWS bills or something...
  - auspex 9y ago
    See my comment above
- 9y ago
StanislavPetrov 9y ago
As someone who witnessed the 2000 tech bubble pop, I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog's day, except unfortunately this time its not just tech. Its going to end very badly.
elsonrodriguez 9y ago
That's a lot of money for a static compiler.
frigen 9y ago
Unikernels are a much better solution to the problems that Docker solves.
- auspex 9y ago
  Im not sure unikernels are a better solution. The texhnology has a lot of promise but the tools are not there yet. For instance running MySQL as a unikernel is possible but it's much more difficult than a container. So "better" is quite subjective... more secure? Sure, easier to deploy and build not even close.
vesak 9y ago
Check out Chef's https://habitat.sh https://habitat.sh for one fresher take on all this. It moves the containerization approach closer to something that feels like Arch Linux packaging, with a pinch of Nix-style reproducibility. Looks very promising at this point, even if a bit rough on the edges still.

Imagine the "value" investors could make if they cordoned off every useful composition of Linux kernel features into a "product" like this.

gaius 9y ago
Yeah, this is like Red Hat spinning off RPM as a separate business...
- dman 9y ago
  Dont give them any ideas!
dboreham 9y ago
Historically the valuable software products were those that (somehow) accreted a "Priesthood" who both promoted their use and restricted widespread understanding (hence solidifying their position as the high priests). I'm thinking here of : Netware, Oracle (the RDBMS) and Weblogic as examples. I think what's going on with Docker is that a Priesthood is being created essentially without the product, or rather the product as a secondary matter. Quite a clever business trick if they pull it off.
InTheArena 9y ago
As someone who did containers with LXC before docker, I think your characterization is off. The value in Docker isn't in the kernel features, but instead in the user space. Ever try Openshift 1/2, as painful as that was it was still better then rolling your own. Docker's big problem isn't what's below them, it's whats above them. Their monetizing strategy has to involve the fortune 500, and right now, all of the momentum in that area is being eaten by Google with Kubernetes. Kubernetes has a very vocal faction that wants nothing to do with Docker, and replace it with something else. Docker has plenty of challenges, but they have delivered significant value, most of which is still open source.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Your comment could be interpreted similarly. If the effort for k8s to move away from docker is minimal, that implies there wasn't much of anything novel in it.
  - InTheArena 9y ago
    It’s not minimal. There is a incredible amount of effort going into this task.
- squeed 9y ago
  Indeed, especially as a company that has a reputation for producing unstable APIs that break between minor versions. This is a team that seems to think it is acceptable to return ASCII art and backspaces in their container management APIs: https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1214 https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1214 So, you're right, but they have a tainted reputation. I wish them all the best, but I don't have high hopes.
  - rrdharan 9y ago
    I see the backspaces (as per that issue) but where's the ASCII art? EDIT: nevermind, found it via one of the linked issues: https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1237 https://github.com/docker/swarm/issues/1237
  - shykes 9y ago
    > especially as a company that has a reputation for producing unstable APIs that break between minor versions. I wish people stopped repeating this without verifying it first. Here is a list of past breaking changes in the Docker API: https://docs.docker.com/engine/breaking_changes/ https://docs.docker.com/engine/breaking_changes/
pdog 9y ago
Docker built a better mousetrap. FreeBSD had jails in 2000. Linux had namespaces and cgroups for years. No one cared until Docker came up with containers in 2013.
- idorosen 9y ago
  OpenVZ, user-mode Linux, and others were very widespread with web hosting and VPS providers since mid-/early-2000s (and probably a little earlier than that too). Docker didn't invent containers, but they were a first mover (as far as I know) in the current flavor of "PaaS" or hosted "non-frameworks" (i.e. environments that don't force you into the hosting provider's userland choices such as library versions, etc.). It's easy to dismiss it as a better mousetrap, but it was an inflection point in the same way puppet and cfengine before it were inflection points in configuration management and "infrastructure as code"... Still, I find the Docker daemon massively invasive and too much of a potential gaping security hole. I wish it was more modular and less of it ran privileged/as root, and don't run it on anything sensitive as a result. Usually properly configuring a box and relying on existing process and other forms of isolation (including namespaces) is good enough, especially with good package management. Great for UX/workflow tooling in a dev VM though!
  - shykes 9y ago
    > I wish it was more modular and less of it ran privileged/as root Under the hood Docker has been heavily modularized. Check out https://containerd.io https://containerd.io which handles all the low-level container operations in a lightweight daemon with way less footprint. You can use it standalone without pulling in the rest of the Docker platform.
- moosingin3space 9y ago
  My personal opinion on this is that Docker's application of Linux namespaces+cgroups happened to solve a specific problem - reducing differences between prod and dev and doing stateless deployment - in a way that is pretty simple and didn't break people's expectations for how Linux works. Prior to that, namespaces and cgroups didn't have a "killer app".

SandersAK 9y ago

get that parkour. get that parkooooouuuurrrr!

jdoliner 9y ago

There's a couple of things in this article that I don't think are true. I don't think Ben Golub was a co-founder of Docker. Maybe he counts as a co-founder of Docker but not of Dotcloud? That seems a bit weird though. I also am pretty sure Docker's headquarters are in San Francisco, not Palo Alto.

pbiggar 9y ago
Cofounder is a title, like any other. It doesn't just refer to "I was there at the start of the corporate entity". If they're calling Ben a cofounder, then they certainly mean it. You're right that he wasn't there at the start of Dotcloud, but that doesn't mean that he didn't have (or didn't earn) the title of cofounder of Docker. Ben's linkedin has "co-founder" of on it, so it certainly wasn't the article making a mistake.
- eldavido 9y ago
  Cofounder is sort of nebulous, it doesn't carry any official legal authority and isn't an "officer" of the corporation in most senses, though it has a lot of cachet in SV. I view it as a relatively cheap bargaining chip that can burnish a person's reputation, but has little descriptive value in terms of what someone actually did to move the business forward.
  - pbiggar 9y ago
    I disagree. You're not exactly handing the title out willy-nilly. If they're calling Ben a cofounder, I'll be that has significant meaning to them.
    - eldavido 9y ago
      Sure, but it's a lot different from being a CEO, shareholder, member of the board, or high-level corporate officer. "Founder" is something you can bestow retroactively, not so much with "CEO". And I'm seeing all sorts of companies hand out titles like "Founding Engineer", "Founding Developer", etc. with the same chump-change 100k/0.1% option packages as before.

new299 9y ago

I'm so curious to understand how you pitch Docker at a 1.3BUSD valuation. With I assume a potential valuation of ~10BUSD to give the investors a decent exit? Does anyone have an insight into this? Looks like Github's last valuation was at 2BUSD. That also seems high, but I can understand this somewhat better as they have revenue, and seem to be much more widely used/accepted than Docker. In addition to that I can see how Github's social features are valuable, and how they might grow into other markets. I don't see this for Docker...

jasode 9y ago
>Does anyone have an insight into this? I don't have insight but I'm guessing the valuation comes from the prospects of enterprise sales.[1] Also, Docker (the company) isn't staying still. We have to assume they will evolve to add future upmarket services on top of Docker that companies will pay for. Investors would see the PowerPoint slides for those future products but we as outsiders don't. Maybe an analogous situation would be the Red Hat multi-billion valuation even though Linux kernel itself is free and open source. [1] https://www.docker.com/pricing https://www.docker.com/pricing
- programd 9y ago
  Their enterprise pricing is per node. So if enough companies sign on to this, ever box/VM they put docker on brings Docker Inc. revenue. I'm sure at large scale this will be more of a flat rate negotiated deal ($XX,XXX per year) but still that's a lot of potential cash on the table. The risk of course is that the nobody will want to pay per-node and the community will just invest in the open source container ecosystem and replicate the Enterprise features with plugins and forks. Still, the market might be big enough that they can become another Red Hat just based on support and stewardship revenue.
  - new299 9y ago
    Becoming another Redhat wouldn't be enough to justify investment at this valuation though would it? They need an upside potential 5 to 10x higher than Redhat's current valuation.

baq 9y ago

they should file for an ICO, dockercoin or containotoken would sell like hotcakes. /s

jaequery 9y ago

why are they called Software Maker?

nxc18 9y ago
Non-tech people have no idea what Docker is. Still even a lot of the less up-to-date people know what it is and I suspect vanishingly few people (relative to something like GitHub) really understand it beyond the mechanics of the commands. Also the intentional re-use of shipping verbiage demands disambiguation.
- PascLeRasc 9y ago
  I've had to use Docker before, and I still have no idea what it is. It's true that they love to say "virtualization" and "containerize" the same way the media loves "disavow" and "recuse".
  - chrisper 9y ago
    In the case of Docker, containers = prepackaged ready-to-use out of the box software. Basically, you run some software (e.g. mysql) inside a docker container and it comes with everything it needs preconfigured and installed (e.g. libraries, configurations,...). This makes it easy to: - Deploy to many places having the same environment - Update these programs easily (you just need to download and run a new container image) - Clean up easily by discarding the container I should probably also add that Docker is also a community to share these application images (containers).
  - samstave 9y ago
    I love that comparison!
mperham 9y ago
So they aren't confused with "Pants Maker"?

z3t4 9y ago

I dont understand containers. First you go to through great pain sharing and reusing libraries. Then you make a copy of all the libraries and the rest of the system for each program !?

bognition 9y ago
Its about creating and maintaining a clean environment. Conceptually they aren't that different than a VM just much lighter weight.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Well, we need to differentiate between application containers (Docker) and Linux containers (old:openVZ, new:LXD/LXC). Then there are application containers which are even more "limited," like Flatpack. I'd argue that only Linux containers are like VMs.
  - imhoguy 9y ago
    Docker was LXC wrapper in the past. Now it just handles cgroup stuff itself. You can run full system in the Docker but purists regard this as antipattern.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      I'd prefer LXD / LXC anyway. Sadly, LXD porting to Debian is a slow process.
- dozzie 9y ago
  Except that it's not clean environment. Make it a properly built DEB or RPM package, and then we're starting (but just starting) to talk about clean. Note also that binary packages help with repeatable deployment that uses Docker, deployment tools (e.g. Ansible or Salt), configuration management tools (CFEngine, Puppet), even manual -- and mix of all these. Docker images only help with Docker deployment.
9y ago

throw2016 9y ago

Docker generated value from the LXC project, aufs, overlay, btrfs and a ton of open source projects yet few people know about these projects, their authors and in the case of the extremely poorly marketed LXC project even what it is thanks to negative marketing by the Docker ecosystem hellbent on 'owning containers'. Who is the author of aufs or overlayfs? Should these projects work with no recognition while VC funded companies with marketing funds swoop down and extract market value without giving anything back. How has Docker contributed back to all the projects it is critically dependent on? This does not seem like a sustainable open source model. A lot of critical problems around containers exist in places like layers, the kernel and these will not get fixed by Docker but aufs or overlayfs and kernel subsystems but given most don't even know the authors of these projects how will this work? There has been a lot of misleading marketing on Linux containers right from 2013 here on HN itself and one wishes there was more informed discussion that would correct some of this misinformation, which didn't happen.

bostand 9y ago
Docker is swimming in cash for some reason only people in SF understand. In the mean time LXD is developed by a single guy...
- Godel_unicode 9y ago
  Is this really that hard to understand? Docker has marketing and developer evangelists etc. LXD is making software, Docker is selling a product.
imhoguy 9y ago
I would add cgroups concept in Linux kernel in general. You can run Docker images with small bash script and systemd-nspawn alone.
- throw2016 9y ago
  Its namespaces. Cgroups can be used to limit any Linux processes and do not have anything in particular to do with containers. Userland container managers use it to limit mainly cpu and memory resources to the container processes. Its kernel namespaces that enable containers and allow one to launch a process in its own namespace(there are 5 namespaces containers use). LXC/LXD containers launch an init in this process so you get a more VM like environment. Docker does not launch an init so you run a single app process or a process manager if you need to run multiple processes. Systemd Nspawn is similar to LXC.

Steeeve 9y ago

The guy who came up with chroot in the first place is kicking himself.

ibn_ibid 9y ago
I think he's doin alright lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy
neolefty 9y ago
By analogy, there's a lot more to a Model T than an internal combustion engine.

slim 9y ago

Docker is funded by In-Q-Tel

fapjacks 9y ago
The shadow government is containerized.
eatmyshorts 9y ago
I'm very curious what your concern is in this? I understand the CIA interest and value in PayPal, Facebook, and Google. But what do they gain from Docker, other than as a simple investment? Backdoors or something?
- api 9y ago
  I have no idea if the parent is correct or what, but just for the sake of argument I can see one issue here. Docker Hub is a massive centralized store of software. If Docker becomes The Way to deploy infrastructure and services, Docker Hub could theoretically trojanize the world. It would be a way of getting the kind of leverage over the Linux world that MS and Apple offer for their respective ecosystems.
  - auspex 9y ago
    You can run a private registry and build your own images.

ahallock 9y ago

Docker still has a long way to go in terms of local development ergonomics. Recently, I finally had my chance to on board a bunch of new devs and have them create their local environment using Docker Compose (we're working on a pretty standard Rails application). We were able to get the environments set up and the app running, but the networking is so slow to be pretty much unusable. Something is wrong with syncing the FS between docker and the host OS. We were using the latest Docker for Mac. If the out of the box experience is this bad, it's unsuitable for local development. I was actually embarrassed.

aaronds 9y ago
Have you tried https://github.com/EugenMayer/docker-sync https://github.com/EugenMayer/docker-sync ? I've had slow FS issues with docker on mac. Integrating docker-sync doesn't take long and should help you out.
- ahallock 9y ago
  I haven't, but I recommended it to one of the devs and he claimed it 'crashed' docker. Need more investigation, but we shouldn't need tools like this; it should work by default.
  - aaronds 9y ago
    Agreed, and to my knowledge this is a known issue (I'm sure I've seen chatter regarding the problem on the docker forums/github). Nonetheless, with docker-sync I've been able to leverage all the benefits of docker-compose whilest mitigating those slow mounted fs issues, so for now I'm happy with it. At least you can configure it directly into your compose set up, so you don't need to spend time explaining it immediately when onboarding those new developers.
ahallock 9y ago
A few things to note: I wasn't using Docker for Mac, but a custom VirtualBox setup that took over a month to perfect. When I last tested Docker for Mac, the networking was really slow then, but I took a gamble that it had been fixed by now. I will give credit as to how easy it was to get the app running -- compose makes everything a snap. It's unfortunate that something is amiss with volumes/networking.

eldavido 9y ago

I wish people would stop talking about valuation this way, emphasizing the bullshit headline valuation. The reality is that (speculating), they probably issued a new class of stock, at $x/share, and that class of stock has all kinds of rights, provisions, protections, etc. that the others don't, and may or may not have any bearing whatsoever on what the other classes of shares are worth.

alexnewman 9y ago

It's time for the cash grabs before the economy implodes

raiyu 9y ago

Monetizing open source directly is a bit challenging because you end up stuck in the same service model as everyone else. Which is basically to sell various support contracts to the fortune 100-500. Forking a project into a enterprise (paid for) version and limiting those features in the original open source version, creates tension in the community, and usually isn't a model that leads to success. Converting an open source project directly into a paid for software or SaaS model is definitely the best route as it reduces head count and allows you to be a software company instead of a service company. Perhaps best captured by Github warpping git with an interface and community and then directly selling a SaaS subscription and eventually an enterprise hosted version that is still delivered on a subscription basis just behind the corporate firewall. Also of note is that Github didn't create git itself, and instead was done on the direct need that developers saw themselves, which means they thought what is the product I want, rather than, we built and maintain git, so let's do that and eventually monetize it.

foota 9y ago

My first reaction was that I was surprised it wasn't higher. My second reaction was incredulity at how ridiculous my first reaction was.

derricgilling 9y ago
They seem to be in a unique position to monetize with multiple models. Compared to something like Github, Docker and Docker Swarm has much more opportunity for large enterprise support contracts. Most companies feel that Docker is synonymous with containers, yet still don't fully understand the technology. Git already had a high adoption years before Github was around so developers were familiar with it (or other VCS) and didn't need to spend thousands of dollars to support a git repo. On the other hand, curious how much revenue DockerHub is bringing in and where they will plan on taking it. That model seems closer to Github. Will it be a newer way to discover new OS or even propriety images like how devs use Github?
- adictator 9y ago
  Oh yes, I believe docker launched store.docker.com just to host proprietary images in a marketplace sort of setting.
derricgilling 9y ago
They seem to be in a unique position to monetize with multiple models. Compared to something like Github, Docker and Docker Swarm has much more opportunity for large enterprise support contracts. Most companies feel that Docker is synonymous with containers, yet still don't fully understand the technology. Git already had a high adoption years before Github was around so developers were familiar with it (or other VCS) and didn't need to spend thousands of dollars to support a git repo. On the other hand, curious how much revenue DockerHub is bringing in and where they will plan on taking it. That model seems closer to Github. Will it be a newer way to discover new OS or even propriety images like how devs use Github?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
9y ago

kev009 9y ago

Do they actually have any significant revenue? I love developer tools companies, but there are several tools upstarts that have no proven business model. They look like really bad gambles in terms of VC investment, unless you can get in early enough to unload to other fools.

eatmyshorts 9y ago
I don't know their numbers, but it has been reported that their 2016 revenue was north of $10m, and that their 2017 revenue is more than 2x that. This is just a guess, but I'd guess that they are seeing >300% year-over-year revenue growth, and that they're projected to see >$50m in 2017. I would guess 20x current revenue, so a $1.3b valuation would mean roughly $10m per month in July 2017 (starting from $2-3m in Jan 2017). If this is accurate, I'd be glad to invest in Docker at a $1.3b valuation.
- kev009 9y ago
  That sounds very pie in the sky, I can't imagine them cleaning 10m a month.

muppetman 9y ago

Gosh, how did the Internet, services, etc every work without containers? Oh, that's right, perfectly.

ralmeida 9y ago
That may be true, but should we then stop trying to evolve technology? The idea of any advance is to either keep quality and reduce costs (time and money investment), or to improve quality. Since by your opinion, the Internet already works perfectly, the good Docker brings to the table is to keep it working perfectly, but requiring less resources (time and money) to do so.
- wpietri 9y ago
  Heh. I am always amazed to see comments like muppetman's. Why get into technology if you don't like to see things improved? It reminds me of this bit from Douglas Adams: "1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
  - muppetman 9y ago
    My point was I don't see how containers have improved anything. Of course tech should be advanced. There's many things that have advanced tech. But I fail to see how containers are one of those things. But you're right, I guess I am just old and grumpy.

bane 9y ago

I feel like this is one of those valuations which makes sense contextually, but not based on any sort of business reality. Docker reminds me a lot of the PKZIP utilities. For those who don't remember, back in the late 80s the PKZIP utilities became a kind of defacto standard on non Unixes for file compression and decompression. The creator of the utilities was a guy named Phil Katz who meant to make money off of the tools, but as was the fashion at the time released them as basically feature complete shareware. Some people did register, and quite a few companies registered to maintain compliance so PKWare (the company) did make a bit of money, but most people didn't bother. Eventually the core functionality was simply built into modern Operating Systems and various compatible clones were released for everything under the sun. Amazingly the company is still around (and even selling PKZIP!) https://www.pkware.com/pkzip https://www.pkware.com/pkzip Katz turned out to be a tragic figure http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/S... But my point is, I know of many many (MANY) people using Docker in development and deployment and I know of nobody at all who's paying them money. I'm sure they exist, the make revenue from somewhere presumably, but they're basically just critical infrastructure at this point and just becoming an expected part of the OS, not a company.

fermuch 9y ago
A nice selling point for me is the registry. If you have a public image, it's totally free. If it's private, you can pay to use it privately in a team. Of course, you can mount your own (it's a docker image, after all), or you can use Google or Amazon to host it, but it is much easier to pay them to host, and you don't need to bother with storage, backups, or authentication. Setting up team permissions is as easy as sending an invitation from the panel.
- gkop 9y ago
  Hmm, GKE's Container Registry also takes care of storage, backups, and authentication. Presumably Quay and Amazon's Container Registry do as well. What makes Docker, Inc.'s registry special?
- nojvek 9y ago

contingencies 9y ago

I worked with LXC since 2009, then personally built a cloud provider agnostic workflow interface superior in scope to Docker in feature set[1] between about 2013-2014 as a side project to assist with my work (managing multi-DC, multi-jurisdiction, high security and availability infrastructure and CI/CD for a major cryptocurrency exchange). (Unfortunately I was not able to release that code because my employer wanted to keep it closed source, but the documentation[2] and early conception[3] has been online since early days.) I was also an early stage contributor to docker, providing security related issues and resolutions based upon my early LXC experience. Based upon the above experience, I firmly believe that Docker could be rewritten by a small team of programmers (~1-3) within a few month timeframe. [1] Docker has grown to add some of this now, but back then had none of it: multiple infrastructure providers (physical bare metal, external cloud providers, own cloud/cluster), normalized CI/CD workflow, pluggable FS layers (eg. use ZFS or LVM2 snapshots instead of AUFS - most development was done on ZFS), inter-service functional dependency, guaranteed-repeatable platform and service package builds (network fetches during package build process are cached)... [2] http://stani.sh/walter/cims/ http://stani.sh/walter/cims/ [3] http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/ http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/

valarauca1 9y ago
It effectively has been. Oracle, Sun, FreeBSD, RunC, OCI None are _as popular_ as docker. But many offer more features, or a flatly superior product. Docker _isnt good_. Docker is popular. Actually their constant breaking of compatibility makes me wonder why everyone continues to tolerate it.
- contingencies 9y ago
  Docker _isnt good_. Docker is popular. Which means a popularity-based valuation is a house of cards.
  - SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
    Maybe. But there's also something to be said for generating popularity and mind share intentionally. It seems Docker has been very good at that part (and pretty good at the technical side too). Many wonderful, technically-superior-than-alternatives projects languish and die in obscurity, while its inferior counterpart wins the popularity/marketing contest.

locusofself 9y ago

I used docker for a while last year and attended Dockercon. I was really excited about it and thought it was going to solve many of my problems. But with how complicated my stack is, it just didn't make sense to use ultimately. I loved the idea of it, but in the end good old virtual machines and configuration management can basically do most of the same stuff. I guess if you want to pack your servers to the brim with processes and shave off whatever performance hit you get from KVM or XEN, I get it. But the idea of the filesystem layers and immutable images just kindof turned to a nightmare for me when I asked myself "how the hell am I going to update/patch this thing" Maybe I'm crazy, but after a lot of excitement it seemed more like an extra layer of tools to deal with more than anything.

icelancer 9y ago
This is unfortunately the conclusion I came to. Virtual machines locally and in the cloud just don't seem to be that much worse in any facet, and Docker (containers in general) seem to be far more complicated. I dunno.
- locusofself 9y ago
  Learning Ansible really well proved far more valuable to my work life. I integrate lots stuff, stuff like OpenVPN, Asterisk, Freeswitch, stuff that can hardly be "contained" and still even work. Some stuff does not work in containers, and even if it does work, dealing with the weird filesystem mounts, "statelessness", locations of logs and other persistent data, and the ethos of just using 1 process per container and so on and so forth. Then think about deploying some complex legacy apps that have upgrade paths that involve changing database schemas and running shell scripts to migrate data. How are you going to reasonably do that with docker? It just hurt my brain to think about it. If you have the luxury of designing your app from the ground up and its not too complicated of a stack then I see how it is cool. But mostly if it saves you money on AWS bills or something...
- auspex 9y ago
  See my comment above
9y ago

StanislavPetrov 9y ago

As someone who witnessed the 2000 tech bubble pop, I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog's day, except unfortunately this time its not just tech. Its going to end very badly.

elsonrodriguez 9y ago

That's a lot of money for a static compiler.

frigen 9y ago

Unikernels are a much better solution to the problems that Docker solves.

auspex 9y ago
Im not sure unikernels are a better solution. The texhnology has a lot of promise but the tools are not there yet. For instance running MySQL as a unikernel is possible but it's much more difficult than a container. So "better" is quite subjective... more secure? Sure, easier to deploy and build not even close.

vesak 9y ago

Check out Chef's https://habitat.sh https://habitat.sh for one fresher take on all this. It moves the containerization approach closer to something that feels like Arch Linux packaging, with a pinch of Nix-style reproducibility. Looks very promising at this point, even if a bit rough on the edges still.