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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 f
by 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.