4 ms·

> they could have licensed an enterprise version of the engine and taken a commission on every server in existence Sounds like a great way to kill docker compl

> they could have licensed an enterprise version of the engine and taken a commission on every server in existence Sounds like a great way to kill docker completely

benjaminwootton 7y ago
Again I refer you to RHEL who have an open source version and an enterprise subscription. The Docker Engine taking a similar route rather than building another PaaS and bumping heads with Kubernetes seems an altogether more differentiated and defensible business model.
- danieldk 7y ago
  Again I refer you to RHEL who have an open source version and an enterprise subscription. But the enterprise version is the open source version. Red Hat just didn't provide the binaries, now they even provide the binaries (since they acquired CentOS). Since White Box Linux, CentOS, and Scientific were started (which was pretty quickly after they launched enterprise Linux), they have been selling per-machine support and 'blame us when it does not work' licenses. A similar approach may have worked, but it is not a given. Red Hat and SUSE arrived on the market when there we no big open source support companies. Once containerization turned out to be a good idea, the other open source companies could quickly adopt and provide support contracts for the same tech (which they have done).
  - BossingAround 7y ago
    Red Hat and CentOS don't have any official relationship. It's CoreOS you're referring to. RHEL's binaries may be available for some SW, but license-wise cannot be used for production workloads unless explicitly stated. CentOS can be used for whatever you wish, but that's not a RH binary of course.
    - zaat 7y ago
      Totally official relationships: https://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/ https://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/
      - BossingAround 7y ago
        So, it depends a lot what you consider an 'official relationship'. You cannot pay and be supported on CentOS. If you talk to Red Hat and you say 'we have CentOS running', the first thing they'll talk to you about is how do you migrate to RHEL, because no officially-supported products from RH run on CentOS. That said, it is in RH's best interest to have a free version of RHEL that customers can try out and migrate their workloads to, precisely because it's easy to migrate them to RHEL. So yes, in that sense, there's some relationship. You're correct though that there's a lot more relationship than I previously thought. Thanks for the link! I'll update my knowledge :).
gopalv 7y ago
> Sounds like a great way to kill docker completely For a good open source ecosystem, a commission isn't like rent, it is more like taxes. There's a balance point where paying someone else to debug and ship fixes for your problems approximates Adam Smith's pin factory. The value part of an enterprise open source system is in turning around fixes fast and debugging on behalf of a customer. >> taken a commission on every server in existence As someone who's worked with Rob before, he gets it that you can't really squeeze money out by force. However, there'll be enough people who pay you to air-drop committers on inexplicable problems & otherwise mostly pay them well to do what they already like doing - ship open source to the community.
zwischenzug 7y ago
They tried that when I worked for an $enterprise. But refused to support any RedHat-based images running on their engine. They also refused to license any of their products separately, seeming desperate to get a tax on any server on which Docker ran. Neither of these went down well. RedHat had that market sewn up, and swatted Docker away like an irritating fly.
- adictator 7y ago
  > But refused to support any RedHat-based images running on their engine. You seem to have gotten that mixed. It was RedHat that refused to support anything (including their RHEL based images) on the docker platform unless it was run on the Red Hat's franken docker. It was RedHat that chose to not play fair, not Docker.
GordonS 7y ago
I was going to say much the same thing. The only reason Docker got so popular outside of Enterprise is because there were no cost barriers - and the reason it became popular inside of Enterprise is because it had become so popular outside of it. I'm sure Docker did miss an opportunity to reap profits, but I really don't think there's as easy answer as to how they might have done that.

> they could have licensed an enterprise version of the engine and taken a commission on every server in existence Sounds like a great way to kill docker completely

benjaminwootton 7y ago

Again I refer you to RHEL who have an open source version and an enterprise subscription. The Docker Engine taking a similar route rather than building another PaaS and bumping heads with Kubernetes seems an altogether more differentiated and defensible business model.

danieldk 7y ago
Again I refer you to RHEL who have an open source version and an enterprise subscription. But the enterprise version is the open source version. Red Hat just didn't provide the binaries, now they even provide the binaries (since they acquired CentOS). Since White Box Linux, CentOS, and Scientific were started (which was pretty quickly after they launched enterprise Linux), they have been selling per-machine support and 'blame us when it does not work' licenses. A similar approach may have worked, but it is not a given. Red Hat and SUSE arrived on the market when there we no big open source support companies. Once containerization turned out to be a good idea, the other open source companies could quickly adopt and provide support contracts for the same tech (which they have done).
- BossingAround 7y ago
  Red Hat and CentOS don't have any official relationship. It's CoreOS you're referring to. RHEL's binaries may be available for some SW, but license-wise cannot be used for production workloads unless explicitly stated. CentOS can be used for whatever you wish, but that's not a RH binary of course.
  - zaat 7y ago
    Totally official relationships: https://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/ https://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/
    - BossingAround 7y ago
      So, it depends a lot what you consider an 'official relationship'. You cannot pay and be supported on CentOS. If you talk to Red Hat and you say 'we have CentOS running', the first thing they'll talk to you about is how do you migrate to RHEL, because no officially-supported products from RH run on CentOS. That said, it is in RH's best interest to have a free version of RHEL that customers can try out and migrate their workloads to, precisely because it's easy to migrate them to RHEL. So yes, in that sense, there's some relationship. You're correct though that there's a lot more relationship than I previously thought. Thanks for the link! I'll update my knowledge :).

gopalv 7y ago

> Sounds like a great way to kill docker completely For a good open source ecosystem, a commission isn't like rent, it is more like taxes. There's a balance point where paying someone else to debug and ship fixes for your problems approximates Adam Smith's pin factory. The value part of an enterprise open source system is in turning around fixes fast and debugging on behalf of a customer. >> taken a commission on every server in existence As someone who's worked with Rob before, he gets it that you can't really squeeze money out by force. However, there'll be enough people who pay you to air-drop committers on inexplicable problems & otherwise mostly pay them well to do what they already like doing - ship open source to the community.

zwischenzug 7y ago

They tried that when I worked for an $enterprise. But refused to support any RedHat-based images running on their engine. They also refused to license any of their products separately, seeming desperate to get a tax on any server on which Docker ran. Neither of these went down well. RedHat had that market sewn up, and swatted Docker away like an irritating fly.

adictator 7y ago
> But refused to support any RedHat-based images running on their engine. You seem to have gotten that mixed. It was RedHat that refused to support anything (including their RHEL based images) on the docker platform unless it was run on the Red Hat's franken docker. It was RedHat that chose to not play fair, not Docker.

GordonS 7y ago

I was going to say much the same thing. The only reason Docker got so popular outside of Enterprise is because there were no cost barriers - and the reason it became popular inside of Enterprise is because it had become so popular outside of it. I'm sure Docker did miss an opportunity to reap profits, but I really don't think there's as easy answer as to how they might have done that.