Docker is "doing fine" in terms of user adoption, but they are not doing fine in terms of revenue acquisition. I think this speaks to a larger problem of open-

Docker is "doing fine" in terms of user adoption, but they are not doing fine in terms of revenue acquisition. I think this speaks to a larger problem of open-source business models in the IT world. What happens is some person makes neat tool to address some neat. It's open-source (read free), a bunch of people adopt it because free, a community takes off, and then the owner of the open-source project starts scrambling to find a way to make money off it. While some OSS businesses have figured out revenue models, most struggle. For example, think of all the DevOps tools out there that are popular but have shit business models. Chef is hugely popular, but I suspect they haven't IPO'd because their revenue looks like shit compared to their actual usage numbers. If you can think of a decent business model for open-source projects, I'd like to hear it haha :) The go-to model has usually been "let's offer support" or "let's offer some premium features" or "let's limit # of users, etc. until you pay", but those business models usually don't work out that well. The bottom line is it's extremely hard to build a popular open-source tool, but it's doubly hard to then transition that popular tool into a revenue model that doesn't cause your users to revolt. So a lot of these companies end up fighting a two-front war they can't win.