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Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise and Docker raises $35M

376 points by chuhnk 7y ago

chuhnk 7y ago
Can anyone explain what this means for the future of Docker the company?
- Kovah 7y ago
  I doubt that much will change. Docker itself already has a paid platform, Docker Hub, which generates revenue trough the private registry. It sounds like Enterprise was a separate branch anyway, so it doesn't seem to affect Docker itself.
- flardinois 7y ago
  Docker also announced a $35M raise today: http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551/0/en/Docker-Restructures-and-Secures-35-Million-to-Advance-Developer-Workflows-for-Modern-Applications.html http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551...
- streetcat1 7y ago
  Yes. Docker the company is gone. It is hollowed out. Docker Enterprise will morph into mirantis Kubernetes offering as added features. Probably the rest of the company will turn into some sort of Kubernetes desktop dev tool.
fortytw2 7y ago
...the Docker CLI is part of the sale? What exactly does that leave Docker the company with?
- fcantournet 7y ago
  the desktop experience and the docker hub apparently a.k.a : the good bits imo.
  - fortytw2 7y ago
    Oh, the macOS app? I've never used that or the Windows app, do you still use the CLI to control them? Docker Hub is kinda worrying for me, as GitHub, Gitlab, GCP, Heroku, and AWS all offer container registries now (and Quay is open source)
    - AaronFriel 7y ago
      The MacOS and Windows App automate the process of running Docker on a non-Linux OS. It sets up a virtual machine, volume mounts, port forwarding, and so on, and the Docker CLI then allows you to just "docker run" an image and have navigation to "http://localhost:3000" http://localhost:3000" just work. Recently the app gained the ability to run a Kubernetes cluster as well, which makes spinning one up on a machine quite a lot easier to evaluate those workflows.
- nabdab 7y ago
  Docker hub and Docker Desktop.
raesene9 7y ago
This seems like a bit of an unusual move at first glance, hopefully more details will come out about Docker's plans. From this article it sounds like Docker are keeping Desktop and Docker hub, neither of which make a lot of money (I'd have thought?), so not sure what their plans are to develop those, but you'd think that without the enterprise product line, they'd perhaps need to start monetising Docker Hub more...
- cloudytoday 7y ago
  Docker Hub does make money with paying for private repo plans but not sure how much that is and how many people are in the "newly restructured" Docker org
  - raesene9 7y ago
    yeah I know Hub has some revenue stream, but I'd be fairly surprised if it even covers the cloud bill they must get from all the free repo's. From my experience most companies using private repos use their cloud provider's ones for the IAM integration.
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    Unless they are downsizing to 10-20 people, I don't see how that generates enough revenue to keep the lights on. It's weird. Assuming Docker Enterprise was keeping the lights on, why would you sell your cash cow? Maybe the price was too good to turn down. But now Docker Inc finds itself in the same shoes as other companies trying to monetize open source without a platform. If this means we'll get to pay for Docker on the desktop AND it'll get improvements, I'm all for it. But it's a tough situation nowadays (nobody expects to pay for most developer tools).
    - zapita 7y ago
      Reading between the lines, it's pretty obvious that the enterprise business did NOT generate enough revenue to keep the lights on.
tiuPapa 7y ago
Not really sure what got acquired here? Are they just taking the docker enterprise business? How can they acquire Docker CLI? Isn't it opensource?
- whalesalad 7y ago
  Open source != no owner.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  They can acquire the team that's primarily building it. If they stay on board and they keep focused on docker CLI, then that's effectively the acquisition of an open source project
  - johannes1234321 7y ago
    And they can take the copyright and the brand and the domain name and ....
- wmf 7y ago
  Moby is open source; I'm not so sure about Docker Engine and Docker CLI.
  - dwined 7y ago
    Docker CLI is open-source - https://github.com/docker/cli https://github.com/docker/cli Docker Engine is open-sourced in its community edition - https://github.com/docker/docker-ce https://github.com/docker/docker-ce
gramakri 7y ago
> Mirantis will keep the Docker Enterprise brand alive, though, which will surely not create any confusion. Is this in jest?
- raesene9 7y ago
  I took that line to be sarcasm.
  - gramakri 7y ago
    I thought it was quite funny that they snuck in that line in the middle of a serious news article.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  I have regular panic attacks about git vs GitHub vs Gitlab. So confusing!
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  This kind of reminds me of the crazy history of the Rolls-Royce brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motors
- AlfeG 7y ago
  As far as I know Mirantis dont use docker for own development...
theflyinghorse 7y ago
Never heard of Mirantis before. Looking at their team page looks like every second person is Slavic (ton of Russians, Ukrainians, Pols etc). Their engineering postings are all in provincial Russian cities too. What's going on here?
- advaita 7y ago
  Why does something have to going on there? Isnt it possible that there exists a profitable tech company outside of US that most of us has never heard of?
  - partisancat 7y ago
    I've heard of mirantis but legitimately forgot they were still in business. I think a good question is what happens when one dumpster fire gets put into another dumpster fire?
  - partisancat 7y ago
    also fairness to the original poster from what I recall mirantis at least to really play up the bad boy russian tech company angle. Always thought it was an odd marketing play.
  - theflyinghorse 7y ago
    Well, their address is in California but bulk of their workforce seems to be in Russia. My confusion is mostly about whether this is an American company that has a ton of eastern Europeans on staff or an Eastern European company with an address in California.
    - advaita 7y ago
      I understand the confusion, I am just not sure if either of this stuff (location/nationality of workforce/location of offices) matters as long as they keep honoring the policies /contractual obligations of docker enterprise and are law abiding entity.
- deleted 7y ago
ravivyas 7y ago
> Update: for reasons only known to Docker’s communications team, we weren’t told about this beforehand, but the company also today announced that it has raised a $35 million funding round from Benchmark. This doesn’t change the overall gist of the story below, but it does highlight the company’s new direction. This is weird Edit: Link of announcement : http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551/0/en/Docker-Restructures-and-Secures-35-Million-to-Advance-Developer-Workflows-for-Modern-Applications.html http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551... Excerpt: AN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Docker today announced it has successfully completed a recapitalization of its equity to position it for future growth, and has secured $35 million in new financing from previous investors Benchmark Capital and Insight Partners. The investment will be used to advance developers’ workflows when building, sharing and running modern applications.
- ravivyas 7y ago
  Can someone explain what is "recapitalization of its equity"
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    It means they were broke af and in a death spiral because nobody wanted to buy any shares of docker at any worthwhile price, so instead, they created a ton of more shares and sold those and now the organization has capital to do things that makes value for all shareholders
    - syedkarim 7y ago
      For clarity: Since a ton more shares have been issued, the previous shareholders own much, much less of the company than they once did.
      - rolltiide 7y ago
        and for clarity, this doesn't get them out of the death spiral it is a key part of the concept! but maybe they generate value with their second wind
baron816 7y ago
Is it just me, or does it seem that New York tech companies are really struggling?
- akulkarni 7y ago
  Docker is headquartered in SF: https://www.docker.com/company/contact https://www.docker.com/company/contact We’re actually in the middle of a tech renaissance in NYC, especially for software infra: eg Datadog, MongoDB.
  - baron816 7y ago
    My bad. I think I got it mixed up with Digital Ocean. Still, WeWork, StackExchange...MongoDB isn’t particularly loved anymore.
levesque 7y ago
Don't Docker Enterprise and Docker Desktop share code and expertise? Isn't this a loss for both of those projects?
lacker 7y ago
This seems like an embarassing error in communications for Docker! I wonder what's going on behind the scenes. There is one positive message for Docker coming out today, which is that they raised $35 million dollars. Yeah, they didn't announce the valuation, so it is probably a down round, but still, getting $35 million dollars to work on your core business is a good thing. However, the first announcement that TechCrunch wrote about didn't include that at all! Check out the timeline here. At 8:45 a.m. TechCrunch publishes the first article, about selling off the Docker Enterprise line. Then at 9:21 a.m. TechCrunch publishes a second article - https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-e... - with two really large pieces of news. Both that Docker raised the $35 million, and they replaced their CEO for the second time since May. TechCrunch says: for reasons only known to Docker’s communications team, we weren’t told about this beforehand. It seems like they only learned the full news after publishing the original article, and quickly wrote a followup in the next half hour. What's going on at Docker to be this confused in the message to the press? Chaos around the leadership change? Close to running out of money and they only raised the round at the last moment? Were they going to sell off the open source component to someone else, but that fell through? Or, boringly, maybe they just thought they clicked "send" on an email that they didn't. I'll keep imagining there's an exciting reason though.
- partisancat 7y ago
  maybe signals it wasn't a done deal or similar? but still, I agree that none of this makes sense. why not just sell off all the bits? like you, wondering if that fell through. sad end to a once tech darling. Has anyone secured rights for the book yet?
  - lacker 7y ago
    Well, it's not an end yet. That $35 million isn't nothing! That's why it's a shame that this was messaged so weirdly, a lot of people are going to skim this news and conclude that Docker went out of business. Plus, open source Docker is a really nice tool. Even if the company tanks, I hope somehow the open source community manages to keep it going, because it would be a shame if the Docker parts of peoples' infrastructure just decayed over time.
zapita 7y ago
This makes much more sense if you think of Docker as two distinct companies that were awkwardly sharing the same name and corporate entity, and are now being separated. One makes developer tools, has a huge developer brand and community. It does not generate revenue except for Docker Hub which probably barely pays for itself. The other sells enterprise products competing directly with Red Hat and Vmware, and indirectly with the big cloud providers. It generates meaningful revenue, but probably flat growth, which considering the huge amounts of VC money invested, makes it a failed business. The investors probably decided that 1) Docker developer tools and brand still have potential, but 2) the enterprise business failed to deliver, so 3) they are jettisoning the latter and recapitalizing the former- essentially starting over.
- partisancat 7y ago
  I agree that docker never got branding right. but the whole thing makes even less sense when you see this nugget: "Mirantis will keep the Docker Enterprise brand alive, though, which will surely not create any confusion."
  - zapita 7y ago
    Since the author of the article was too busy trying to be funny, I will do his job for him and explain why this makes sense. Docker needs to keep its brand, obviously, or they have nothing to build a new business from. But Mirantis is buying a business line called “Docker Enterprise”. That name can’t disappear overnight, it would be immensely confusing to customers, and impossible to pull off operationally. What you do in these situations is make an exception to the trademark exclusivity. Usually with a time limit. So, for example, Mirantis would have 2 years until they have to stop using the name “Docker enterprise”. On the one hand that is confusing to analysts and journalists; on the other hand, developers don’t care about the enterprise product anyway, so to them it won’t be confusing. And this was probably the least messy option.
    - tpetry 7y ago
      Docker naming was all the time confusing. Think on Docker swarm which are 2 (3?) products.
thresh 7y ago
Finally they found someone to get sold to. Only 750 customers, so low. And no info on the price.
- zapita 7y ago
  750 customers for an enterprise business is quite high. They are not counting Docker Hub customers which are probably in the tens of thousands.
AaronFriel 7y ago
Docker is the single best thing to happen to software deployment in 20 years, not just because of what it did for eliminating "works on my machine" build problems, but because of what it enabled. A huge ecosystem has sprung up around containerization, with immense value created for other businesses. Their "Docker for Windows/Mac" apps are one of the first things I install on any new dev machine. It's unfortunate they didn't figure out a way to make money off the best thing to happen to building and deploying software in 20 years. A lot of other people did, from the startups now selling value-adds to Kubernetes like Kong and Tigera and TwistLock (since acquired) and others, to the public clouds which all offer Docker-based build services, image registries, and PaaS deployment tooling, to Kubernetes itself which for most users today still relies on Docker.
- VonGuard 7y ago
  It's a lot like Sun Microsystems and Java. That was a big improvement in the lives of developers, but the company behind it never really figured out how to make money on it.
  - pulse7 7y ago
    Sun made big money with Java through licensing. Any Java-compatible implementation vendor paid big money to Sun (including IBM, Azure, etc.).
    - derefr 7y ago
      Was that really "big money"? How many vendors were there, and how many licenses did each end up paying for?
      - wmf 7y ago
        If you wanted to write your own JVM or port the JVM to a different OS you had to pay something like $1M. I wouldn't call it big money because there aren't that many OSes. J2ME phones also paid royalties (which led to the Android lawsuit).
      - 7y ago
z92 7y ago
This news comes at a time when I discovered that Fedora 31, the latest release, doesn't support Docker anymore.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  To give more background, it supports Podman[1], which behaves the same as Docker in many ways. But the support situation changed with Fedora 31 because of CgroupsV2[2]; however, that doesn't mean Docker CE _won't_ ever run on Fedora 31. Follow this GitHub issue[3] for progress [1] https://podman.io https://podman.io [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/CGroupsV2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/CGroupsV2 [3] https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/665 https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/665
talawahtech 7y ago
I kinda wish Microsoft would just acquire the rest of the company and be done with it. It fits in very well with their Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers focus. Especially in the era of Open Source friendly MS. VSCode, GutHub and Docker. Three peas in a pod.
- streetcat1 7y ago
  Anything MS is about driving traffic to Azure and avoid leaking traffic to AWS/GCP. In this context, I am not sure how acquiring docker will do that?
  - yyhhsj0521 7y ago
    How are VS Code and GitHub about driving traffic to Azure?
    - streetcat1 7y ago
      For VSCode, I think that Microsoft is introducing extensions for specific MS services. For exmaple, you can run ML experiminets directly from VSCode. I would expect VSCode to slowly become azure services UI. For GitHub, Look at the steps from the acquisition forward. For example, github actions is a CI/CD run on azure. Next step would be a gitops service that will integrate with AKS. Etc.
      - flurdy 7y ago
        > Next step would be a gitops service that will integrate with AKS That means Weaveworks swallowed up soon then[1], with its Flux GitOps for Kubernetes[2]. [1] https://www.weave.works/ https://www.weave.works/ [2] https://fluxcd.io/ https://fluxcd.io/
    - mmcnl 7y ago
      I think VS Code and GitHub are mainly about branding and building a new reputation. Microsoft provides first-class development tools (VS Code and GitHub) to millions of developers every day now. Once this becomes the new normal to developers, Azure easily becomes a serious contender for running your applications as well.
tnolet 7y ago
Sad to see this happen, but honestly their SaaS products (Docker Cloud, Docker hub etc.) were absolutely terrible. The UI and UX felt like some half assed intern rush job. Terrible bugs around things like login and teams that just never got fixed. As if no one really cared.
laminarflow 7y ago
Are there any particularly detailed/good anthologies out there about the founding/fate of Docker after Google opensourced Kubernetes?
dgoog 7y ago
docker is finally dead - it's k8s turn next it looks like they went out of their way to find their employees a new home which is super cool of them and we probably don't hear about that much - that's what actually happened here as if enough of us haven't said this enough - if your company is adopting containers/k8s you are going to end up with a bag of dead horses, buyer beware
Pirate-of-SV 7y ago
Does anyone have a background story of Mirantis? Where's the money coming from?
- szczepano 7y ago
  https://www.mirantis.com/company/investors/ https://www.mirantis.com/company/investors/
harikb 7y ago
Can we please not show yet another container ship every time there is a new about Docker? I get it - all news articles need an image. But imagine being a non-tech person trying to follow news and wonders...
techntoke 7y ago
When is Docker going to add the basic functionality to see if a container image is out of date from the registry, without having to re-pull the image?
deanmoriarty 7y ago
Something makes me feel that today a lot of hard working employees lost all their stock options, or their hard earned cash if they previously exercised them... Mirantis can't possibly have paid multiple billions for that, which means all common stockholders were likely wiped out as part of this "fire sale" (pure speculation on my side).
- nemo44x 7y ago
  Probably, yes. Unless they turn it around in a big way and IPO one day, your typical rank and file is probably out of luck here. The good news is they have a lot of engineering talent so if you’re a hiring manager then now is a good time to begin directing your recruiters to poach aggressively from there.
GordonS 7y ago
I've never even heard of Mirantis - curious to know if I'm alone in this, or if they're better known by others on HN?
hnmullany 7y ago
LinkedIN profiles that mention Docker Mar 2015: 14,000 Mar 2016: 50,000 Dec 2017: 178,000 Nov 2019: 534,000 Still going up!
shshhdhs 7y ago
I wonder why the investors weren't concerned. They've replaced their CEO for the second time since May.
hlesesne 7y ago
Who keeps Docker hub?
- zapita 7y ago
  Docker.
mister_hn 7y ago
It buffles me that software-wonder Docker raises so few money compared to unicorns like WeWork or some SF Startup.

376 points by chuhnk 7y ago

chuhnk 7y ago

Can anyone explain what this means for the future of Docker the company?

Kovah 7y ago
I doubt that much will change. Docker itself already has a paid platform, Docker Hub, which generates revenue trough the private registry. It sounds like Enterprise was a separate branch anyway, so it doesn't seem to affect Docker itself.
flardinois 7y ago
Docker also announced a $35M raise today: http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551/0/en/Docker-Restructures-and-Secures-35-Million-to-Advance-Developer-Workflows-for-Modern-Applications.html http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551...
streetcat1 7y ago
Yes. Docker the company is gone. It is hollowed out. Docker Enterprise will morph into mirantis Kubernetes offering as added features. Probably the rest of the company will turn into some sort of Kubernetes desktop dev tool.

fortytw2 7y ago

...the Docker CLI is part of the sale? What exactly does that leave Docker the company with?

fcantournet 7y ago
the desktop experience and the docker hub apparently a.k.a : the good bits imo.
- fortytw2 7y ago
  Oh, the macOS app? I've never used that or the Windows app, do you still use the CLI to control them? Docker Hub is kinda worrying for me, as GitHub, Gitlab, GCP, Heroku, and AWS all offer container registries now (and Quay is open source)
  - AaronFriel 7y ago
    The MacOS and Windows App automate the process of running Docker on a non-Linux OS. It sets up a virtual machine, volume mounts, port forwarding, and so on, and the Docker CLI then allows you to just "docker run" an image and have navigation to "http://localhost:3000" http://localhost:3000" just work. Recently the app gained the ability to run a Kubernetes cluster as well, which makes spinning one up on a machine quite a lot easier to evaluate those workflows.
nabdab 7y ago
Docker hub and Docker Desktop.

raesene9 7y ago

This seems like a bit of an unusual move at first glance, hopefully more details will come out about Docker's plans. From this article it sounds like Docker are keeping Desktop and Docker hub, neither of which make a lot of money (I'd have thought?), so not sure what their plans are to develop those, but you'd think that without the enterprise product line, they'd perhaps need to start monetising Docker Hub more...

cloudytoday 7y ago
Docker Hub does make money with paying for private repo plans but not sure how much that is and how many people are in the "newly restructured" Docker org
- raesene9 7y ago
  yeah I know Hub has some revenue stream, but I'd be fairly surprised if it even covers the cloud bill they must get from all the free repo's. From my experience most companies using private repos use their cloud provider's ones for the IAM integration.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  Unless they are downsizing to 10-20 people, I don't see how that generates enough revenue to keep the lights on. It's weird. Assuming Docker Enterprise was keeping the lights on, why would you sell your cash cow? Maybe the price was too good to turn down. But now Docker Inc finds itself in the same shoes as other companies trying to monetize open source without a platform. If this means we'll get to pay for Docker on the desktop AND it'll get improvements, I'm all for it. But it's a tough situation nowadays (nobody expects to pay for most developer tools).
  - zapita 7y ago
    Reading between the lines, it's pretty obvious that the enterprise business did NOT generate enough revenue to keep the lights on.

tiuPapa 7y ago

Not really sure what got acquired here? Are they just taking the docker enterprise business? How can they acquire Docker CLI? Isn't it opensource?

whalesalad 7y ago
Open source != no owner.
skrebbel 7y ago
They can acquire the team that's primarily building it. If they stay on board and they keep focused on docker CLI, then that's effectively the acquisition of an open source project
- johannes1234321 7y ago
  And they can take the copyright and the brand and the domain name and ....
wmf 7y ago
Moby is open source; I'm not so sure about Docker Engine and Docker CLI.
- dwined 7y ago
  Docker CLI is open-source - https://github.com/docker/cli https://github.com/docker/cli Docker Engine is open-sourced in its community edition - https://github.com/docker/docker-ce https://github.com/docker/docker-ce

gramakri 7y ago

> Mirantis will keep the Docker Enterprise brand alive, though, which will surely not create any confusion. Is this in jest?

raesene9 7y ago
I took that line to be sarcasm.
- gramakri 7y ago
  I thought it was quite funny that they snuck in that line in the middle of a serious news article.
skrebbel 7y ago
I have regular panic attacks about git vs GitHub vs Gitlab. So confusing!
dcolkitt 7y ago
This kind of reminds me of the crazy history of the Rolls-Royce brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motors
AlfeG 7y ago
As far as I know Mirantis dont use docker for own development...

theflyinghorse 7y ago

Never heard of Mirantis before. Looking at their team page looks like every second person is Slavic (ton of Russians, Ukrainians, Pols etc). Their engineering postings are all in provincial Russian cities too. What's going on here?

advaita 7y ago
Why does something have to going on there? Isnt it possible that there exists a profitable tech company outside of US that most of us has never heard of?
- partisancat 7y ago
  I've heard of mirantis but legitimately forgot they were still in business. I think a good question is what happens when one dumpster fire gets put into another dumpster fire?
- partisancat 7y ago
  also fairness to the original poster from what I recall mirantis at least to really play up the bad boy russian tech company angle. Always thought it was an odd marketing play.
- theflyinghorse 7y ago
  Well, their address is in California but bulk of their workforce seems to be in Russia. My confusion is mostly about whether this is an American company that has a ton of eastern Europeans on staff or an Eastern European company with an address in California.
  - advaita 7y ago
    I understand the confusion, I am just not sure if either of this stuff (location/nationality of workforce/location of offices) matters as long as they keep honoring the policies /contractual obligations of docker enterprise and are law abiding entity.
deleted 7y ago

ravivyas 7y ago

> Update: for reasons only known to Docker’s communications team, we weren’t told about this beforehand, but the company also today announced that it has raised a $35 million funding round from Benchmark. This doesn’t change the overall gist of the story below, but it does highlight the company’s new direction. This is weird Edit: Link of announcement : http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551/0/en/Docker-Restructures-and-Secures-35-Million-to-Advance-Developer-Workflows-for-Modern-Applications.html http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/13/1946551... Excerpt: AN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Docker today announced it has successfully completed a recapitalization of its equity to position it for future growth, and has secured $35 million in new financing from previous investors Benchmark Capital and Insight Partners. The investment will be used to advance developers’ workflows when building, sharing and running modern applications.

ravivyas 7y ago
Can someone explain what is "recapitalization of its equity"
- rolltiide 7y ago
  It means they were broke af and in a death spiral because nobody wanted to buy any shares of docker at any worthwhile price, so instead, they created a ton of more shares and sold those and now the organization has capital to do things that makes value for all shareholders
  - syedkarim 7y ago
    For clarity: Since a ton more shares have been issued, the previous shareholders own much, much less of the company than they once did.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      and for clarity, this doesn't get them out of the death spiral it is a key part of the concept! but maybe they generate value with their second wind

baron816 7y ago

Is it just me, or does it seem that New York tech companies are really struggling?

akulkarni 7y ago
Docker is headquartered in SF: https://www.docker.com/company/contact https://www.docker.com/company/contact We’re actually in the middle of a tech renaissance in NYC, especially for software infra: eg Datadog, MongoDB.
- baron816 7y ago
  My bad. I think I got it mixed up with Digital Ocean. Still, WeWork, StackExchange...MongoDB isn’t particularly loved anymore.

levesque 7y ago

Don't Docker Enterprise and Docker Desktop share code and expertise? Isn't this a loss for both of those projects?

lacker 7y ago

This seems like an embarassing error in communications for Docker! I wonder what's going on behind the scenes. There is one positive message for Docker coming out today, which is that they raised $35 million dollars. Yeah, they didn't announce the valuation, so it is probably a down round, but still, getting $35 million dollars to work on your core business is a good thing. However, the first announcement that TechCrunch wrote about didn't include that at all! Check out the timeline here. At 8:45 a.m. TechCrunch publishes the first article, about selling off the Docker Enterprise line. Then at 9:21 a.m. TechCrunch publishes a second article - https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-enterprise/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-e... - with two really large pieces of news. Both that Docker raised the $35 million, and they replaced their CEO for the second time since May. TechCrunch says: for reasons only known to Docker’s communications team, we weren’t told about this beforehand. It seems like they only learned the full news after publishing the original article, and quickly wrote a followup in the next half hour. What's going on at Docker to be this confused in the message to the press? Chaos around the leadership change? Close to running out of money and they only raised the round at the last moment? Were they going to sell off the open source component to someone else, but that fell through? Or, boringly, maybe they just thought they clicked "send" on an email that they didn't. I'll keep imagining there's an exciting reason though.

partisancat 7y ago
maybe signals it wasn't a done deal or similar? but still, I agree that none of this makes sense. why not just sell off all the bits? like you, wondering if that fell through. sad end to a once tech darling. Has anyone secured rights for the book yet?
- lacker 7y ago
  Well, it's not an end yet. That $35 million isn't nothing! That's why it's a shame that this was messaged so weirdly, a lot of people are going to skim this news and conclude that Docker went out of business. Plus, open source Docker is a really nice tool. Even if the company tanks, I hope somehow the open source community manages to keep it going, because it would be a shame if the Docker parts of peoples' infrastructure just decayed over time.

zapita 7y ago

This makes much more sense if you think of Docker as two distinct companies that were awkwardly sharing the same name and corporate entity, and are now being separated. One makes developer tools, has a huge developer brand and community. It does not generate revenue except for Docker Hub which probably barely pays for itself. The other sells enterprise products competing directly with Red Hat and Vmware, and indirectly with the big cloud providers. It generates meaningful revenue, but probably flat growth, which considering the huge amounts of VC money invested, makes it a failed business. The investors probably decided that 1) Docker developer tools and brand still have potential, but 2) the enterprise business failed to deliver, so 3) they are jettisoning the latter and recapitalizing the former- essentially starting over.

partisancat 7y ago
I agree that docker never got branding right. but the whole thing makes even less sense when you see this nugget: "Mirantis will keep the Docker Enterprise brand alive, though, which will surely not create any confusion."
- zapita 7y ago
  Since the author of the article was too busy trying to be funny, I will do his job for him and explain why this makes sense. Docker needs to keep its brand, obviously, or they have nothing to build a new business from. But Mirantis is buying a business line called “Docker Enterprise”. That name can’t disappear overnight, it would be immensely confusing to customers, and impossible to pull off operationally. What you do in these situations is make an exception to the trademark exclusivity. Usually with a time limit. So, for example, Mirantis would have 2 years until they have to stop using the name “Docker enterprise”. On the one hand that is confusing to analysts and journalists; on the other hand, developers don’t care about the enterprise product anyway, so to them it won’t be confusing. And this was probably the least messy option.
  - tpetry 7y ago
    Docker naming was all the time confusing. Think on Docker swarm which are 2 (3?) products.

thresh 7y ago

Finally they found someone to get sold to. Only 750 customers, so low. And no info on the price.

zapita 7y ago
750 customers for an enterprise business is quite high. They are not counting Docker Hub customers which are probably in the tens of thousands.

AaronFriel 7y ago

Docker is the single best thing to happen to software deployment in 20 years, not just because of what it did for eliminating "works on my machine" build problems, but because of what it enabled. A huge ecosystem has sprung up around containerization, with immense value created for other businesses. Their "Docker for Windows/Mac" apps are one of the first things I install on any new dev machine. It's unfortunate they didn't figure out a way to make money off the best thing to happen to building and deploying software in 20 years. A lot of other people did, from the startups now selling value-adds to Kubernetes like Kong and Tigera and TwistLock (since acquired) and others, to the public clouds which all offer Docker-based build services, image registries, and PaaS deployment tooling, to Kubernetes itself which for most users today still relies on Docker.

VonGuard 7y ago
It's a lot like Sun Microsystems and Java. That was a big improvement in the lives of developers, but the company behind it never really figured out how to make money on it.
- pulse7 7y ago
  Sun made big money with Java through licensing. Any Java-compatible implementation vendor paid big money to Sun (including IBM, Azure, etc.).
  - derefr 7y ago
    Was that really "big money"? How many vendors were there, and how many licenses did each end up paying for?
    - wmf 7y ago
      If you wanted to write your own JVM or port the JVM to a different OS you had to pay something like $1M. I wouldn't call it big money because there aren't that many OSes. J2ME phones also paid royalties (which led to the Android lawsuit).
    - 7y ago

z92 7y ago

This news comes at a time when I discovered that Fedora 31, the latest release, doesn't support Docker anymore.

geerlingguy 7y ago
To give more background, it supports Podman[1], which behaves the same as Docker in many ways. But the support situation changed with Fedora 31 because of CgroupsV2[2]; however, that doesn't mean Docker CE _won't_ ever run on Fedora 31. Follow this GitHub issue[3] for progress [1] https://podman.io https://podman.io [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/CGroupsV2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/CGroupsV2 [3] https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/665 https://github.com/docker/for-linux/issues/665

talawahtech 7y ago

I kinda wish Microsoft would just acquire the rest of the company and be done with it. It fits in very well with their Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers focus. Especially in the era of Open Source friendly MS. VSCode, GutHub and Docker. Three peas in a pod.

streetcat1 7y ago
Anything MS is about driving traffic to Azure and avoid leaking traffic to AWS/GCP. In this context, I am not sure how acquiring docker will do that?
- yyhhsj0521 7y ago
  How are VS Code and GitHub about driving traffic to Azure?
  - streetcat1 7y ago
    For VSCode, I think that Microsoft is introducing extensions for specific MS services. For exmaple, you can run ML experiminets directly from VSCode. I would expect VSCode to slowly become azure services UI. For GitHub, Look at the steps from the acquisition forward. For example, github actions is a CI/CD run on azure. Next step would be a gitops service that will integrate with AKS. Etc.
    - flurdy 7y ago
      > Next step would be a gitops service that will integrate with AKS That means Weaveworks swallowed up soon then[1], with its Flux GitOps for Kubernetes[2]. [1] https://www.weave.works/ https://www.weave.works/ [2] https://fluxcd.io/ https://fluxcd.io/
  - mmcnl 7y ago
    I think VS Code and GitHub are mainly about branding and building a new reputation. Microsoft provides first-class development tools (VS Code and GitHub) to millions of developers every day now. Once this becomes the new normal to developers, Azure easily becomes a serious contender for running your applications as well.

tnolet 7y ago

Sad to see this happen, but honestly their SaaS products (Docker Cloud, Docker hub etc.) were absolutely terrible. The UI and UX felt like some half assed intern rush job. Terrible bugs around things like login and teams that just never got fixed. As if no one really cared.

laminarflow 7y ago

Are there any particularly detailed/good anthologies out there about the founding/fate of Docker after Google opensourced Kubernetes?

dgoog 7y ago

docker is finally dead - it's k8s turn next it looks like they went out of their way to find their employees a new home which is super cool of them and we probably don't hear about that much - that's what actually happened here as if enough of us haven't said this enough - if your company is adopting containers/k8s you are going to end up with a bag of dead horses, buyer beware

Pirate-of-SV 7y ago

Does anyone have a background story of Mirantis? Where's the money coming from?

szczepano 7y ago
https://www.mirantis.com/company/investors/ https://www.mirantis.com/company/investors/

harikb 7y ago

Can we please not show yet another container ship every time there is a new about Docker? I get it - all news articles need an image. But imagine being a non-tech person trying to follow news and wonders...

techntoke 7y ago

When is Docker going to add the basic functionality to see if a container image is out of date from the registry, without having to re-pull the image?

deanmoriarty 7y ago

Something makes me feel that today a lot of hard working employees lost all their stock options, or their hard earned cash if they previously exercised them... Mirantis can't possibly have paid multiple billions for that, which means all common stockholders were likely wiped out as part of this "fire sale" (pure speculation on my side).

nemo44x 7y ago
Probably, yes. Unless they turn it around in a big way and IPO one day, your typical rank and file is probably out of luck here. The good news is they have a lot of engineering talent so if you’re a hiring manager then now is a good time to begin directing your recruiters to poach aggressively from there.

GordonS 7y ago

I've never even heard of Mirantis - curious to know if I'm alone in this, or if they're better known by others on HN?

hnmullany 7y ago

LinkedIN profiles that mention Docker Mar 2015: 14,000 Mar 2016: 50,000 Dec 2017: 178,000 Nov 2019: 534,000 Still going up!

shshhdhs 7y ago

I wonder why the investors weren't concerned. They've replaced their CEO for the second time since May.

hlesesne 7y ago

Who keeps Docker hub?

zapita 7y ago
Docker.

mister_hn 7y ago

It buffles me that software-wonder Docker raises so few money compared to unicorns like WeWork or some SF Startup.