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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

by 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.
SwellJoe 9y ago
I was always amazed/impressed/annoyed that when Docker exploded in popularity it was a tiny pile of code, and a bunch of other mature and mostly mature pieces from the OSS community, and yet "Docker" was what everyone recognized from that equation...even though 95% of the code was something else. Possibly the most amazing thing was that Docker was so successful while doing less than LXC. It was incredibly impressive marketing, no matter what else we might say about it. And, since then, of course, they've leveraged that early success into a real platform and they've since built a much bigger pile of things (some are even really good). It's kind of a testament to the wildly over-optimistic approach of Silicon Valley product-building, and maybe also kinda damning of the sort of pillaging that the process often involves. I had my reservations about Docker in the beginning, for all the reasons I mentioned above, but I'd be unlikely to bet against them, honestly. And, they have contributed quite a bit to OSS. I've been poking around in golang, lately, and have found a lot of libraries in my area of interest created by the Docker folks. They're seemingly doing good things, though not on par with Red Hat, which is entirely an OSS company.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  > Possibly the most amazing thing was that Docker was so successful while doing less than LXC. This is where I agree with Peter Thiel's very succinct (although somewhat philosophical) definition of the term technology in "Zero To One": it allows us to do more with less. Sometimes, merely re-imagining a better way to use existing tech could unlock new kinds of productivity previously unimagined. One of the best examples of this is the iPhone.
alexbeloi 9y ago
>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? Here's an exert from a docker blog post from 2013[0] >>Under the hood Docker makes heavy use of AUFS by Junjiro R. Okajima as a copy-on-write storage mechanism. AUFS is an amazing piece of software and at this point it’s safe to say that it has safely copied billions of containers over the last few years, a great many of them in critical production environments. Unfortunately, AUFS is not part of the standard linux kernel and it’s unclear when it will be merged. This has prevented docker from being available on all Linux systems. Docker 0.7 solves this problem by introducing a storage driver API, and shipping with several drivers. Currently 3 drivers are available: AUFS, VFS (which uses simple directories and copy) and DEVICEMAPPER, developed in collaboration with Alex Larsson and the talented team at Red Hat, which uses an advanced variation of LVM snapshots to implement copy-on-write. An experimental BTRFS driver is also being developed, with even more coming soon: ZFS, Gluster, Ceph, etc. I think the real nature of your complaint is that you want the recognition to be in the form of cash. [0] https://blog.docker.com/2013/11/docker-0-7-docker-now-runs-on-any-linux-distribution/ https://blog.docker.com/2013/11/docker-0-7-docker-now-runs-o...
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I agree with him, usually supermarket cashiers don't accept blog posts.

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.

SwellJoe 9y ago

I was always amazed/impressed/annoyed that when Docker exploded in popularity it was a tiny pile of code, and a bunch of other mature and mostly mature pieces from the OSS community, and yet "Docker" was what everyone recognized from that equation...even though 95% of the code was something else. Possibly the most amazing thing was that Docker was so successful while doing less than LXC. It was incredibly impressive marketing, no matter what else we might say about it. And, since then, of course, they've leveraged that early success into a real platform and they've since built a much bigger pile of things (some are even really good). It's kind of a testament to the wildly over-optimistic approach of Silicon Valley product-building, and maybe also kinda damning of the sort of pillaging that the process often involves. I had my reservations about Docker in the beginning, for all the reasons I mentioned above, but I'd be unlikely to bet against them, honestly. And, they have contributed quite a bit to OSS. I've been poking around in golang, lately, and have found a lot of libraries in my area of interest created by the Docker folks. They're seemingly doing good things, though not on par with Red Hat, which is entirely an OSS company.

sah2ed 9y ago
> Possibly the most amazing thing was that Docker was so successful while doing less than LXC. This is where I agree with Peter Thiel's very succinct (although somewhat philosophical) definition of the term technology in "Zero To One": it allows us to do more with less. Sometimes, merely re-imagining a better way to use existing tech could unlock new kinds of productivity previously unimagined. One of the best examples of this is the iPhone.

alexbeloi 9y ago

>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? Here's an exert from a docker blog post from 2013[0] >>Under the hood Docker makes heavy use of AUFS by Junjiro R. Okajima as a copy-on-write storage mechanism. AUFS is an amazing piece of software and at this point it’s safe to say that it has safely copied billions of containers over the last few years, a great many of them in critical production environments. Unfortunately, AUFS is not part of the standard linux kernel and it’s unclear when it will be merged. This has prevented docker from being available on all Linux systems. Docker 0.7 solves this problem by introducing a storage driver API, and shipping with several drivers. Currently 3 drivers are available: AUFS, VFS (which uses simple directories and copy) and DEVICEMAPPER, developed in collaboration with Alex Larsson and the talented team at Red Hat, which uses an advanced variation of LVM snapshots to implement copy-on-write. An experimental BTRFS driver is also being developed, with even more coming soon: ZFS, Gluster, Ceph, etc. I think the real nature of your complaint is that you want the recognition to be in the form of cash. [0] https://blog.docker.com/2013/11/docker-0-7-docker-now-runs-on-any-linux-distribution/ https://blog.docker.com/2013/11/docker-0-7-docker-now-runs-o...

pjmlp 9y ago
I agree with him, usually supermarket cashiers don't accept blog posts.