7 ms·

What happened to docker? They basically democratized this whole container thing and launched a paradigm shift in deployment. But you never hear from them anymor

by atonse 6y ago

What happened to docker? They basically democratized this whole container thing and launched a paradigm shift in deployment. But you never hear from them anymore except when mentioning the command line container launcher. Or am I missing something here? Is there an interesting business story there of the missteps made? Just to clarify, I run docker every day (docker for mac)... my question is more how much of the industry revenue they are able to capture as a business. I wouldn't ask this if they were just an open source project with no business ambitions.

the8472 6y ago
They got their business solution (docker-swarm) eaten by kubernetes. So now they're only really the CLI and the public registry.
- bgorman 6y ago
  On Linux they aren't even the CLI anymore. Buildah and podman are much better
  - rb808 6y ago
    I've struggled with podman, esp when following tutorials for docker when podman doesn't quite replicate. Is it worth persisting?
    - freedomben 6y ago
      Yes, it's definitely worth persisting, especially if you use K8s. Podman can import/export Pod objects with the same API as K8s, so it makes it trivial to run the same k8s yaml locally and in a deployed environment.
      - the_duke 6y ago
        Running a light weight Kubernetes setup like k3s locally is a better solution for that use case, imo.
        freedomben 6y ago
        k3s is something I've heard about but know very little. Does it use a VM? I tried skimming their website but couldn't parse that out.
        the_duke 6y ago
        No VM, it is just a light weight distribution of Kubernetes that can be effortlessly installed and run on Linux.
    - jkulubya 6y ago
      I personally feel that any pain you might face with podman is worth it just for the ability to treat container applications just like any other application on your system https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-shareable-systemd-services https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-shareable-systemd-ser...
  - harrygeez 6y ago
    so daemonless (tbh I'm not even sure why is this a good thing) and better security through rootless aside, what are some strong points to switch over?
    - Macha 6y ago
      Rootless is really the big selling point for me. Means I can just let gitlab CI log in as a specific user to deploy my personal apps, without someone compromising gitlab/my gitlab account giving them root on my personal servers. The other advantage is that it can setup containers based on kubernetes xml file or export a local setup to a kube xml file. This is because Podman is really aimed at the small scale setups - if you would have used docker-compose with docker, you might consider Podman, but the export lets you prototype with something convenient locally then export a config when you're happy to test on the big complicated tooling.
  - boolcow 6y ago
    How are they "much better"? Docker works extremely well. I build and run Docker containers all over the place and they Just Work.
    - nikanj 6y ago
      They're newer, and fewer people have heard of them.
    - pknopf 6y ago
      Not running as root, for one. There are also many other advantages, such as decoupling the building from the running, and running rootfs tarballs directly, blah blah blah.
    - Majestic121 6y ago
      I had the exact same question, and for podman one of the selling point is that it's a drop in replacement and you don't need root privilege : https://opensource.com/article/19/2/how-does-rootless-podman-work https://opensource.com/article/19/2/how-does-rootless-podman...
    - bgorman 6y ago
      "Docker" is just the userspace component of a Linux kernel feature. "Docker" doesn't run anything, the kernel does. Podman has three main advantages over docker: Not needing to run as root, not requiring a daemon in the background and being packaged directly by linux distros.
      - boolcow 6y ago
        1. systemd runs as root, doesn't bother me that docker daemon does as well, since they do similar things (for me). Only users with access to the socket file have access. 2. I like the idea of not having a daemon but never actually had a problem with this in practice. The daemon has never crashed on me. systemd also has daemons that have also never crashed on me. 3. It's like 3 lines to install the official docker package. This is a non-issue for me. Those do not sound like very meaningful advantages. Certainly not significant enough for me to want to switch from something that Just Works. Thanks for the reply though. I'll be sticking with Docker.
  - stevekemp 6y ago
    The downside to podman is that you lose docker-compose. (Yes I know there is podman-compose, but it isn't as complete.) docker-compose has issues of its own, but when you can use it then it works really well.
    - Macha 6y ago
      At least for my use case, I haven't really noticed anything missing from podman-compose when I dumped docker-compose for it. I think ideally they want you to use kube XML for this use case, though I haven't because it doesn't let me associate a named volume with a set of containers. The suggestion is to use bind mounts to the host instead, which feels like an issue for container portability. Podman Compose does not have this limitation
      - hiram112 6y ago
        I tried to use the Podman and Podman-compose stack for a large develop docker environment I run locally. The individual containers build alright, but running the compose with Podman-Compose failed miserably with unhelpful output - just a bunch of Python stack traces. Running it with Docker-Compose just worked. I think that Docker-Compose is just a lot more lenient with Yaml type errors - where things should and shouldn't be surrounded in quotes. Podman-Compose just needs to be a little more forgiving, and continuing to parse the compose files if the semantics can be assumed, even if the syntax is not perfect.
- zapita 6y ago
  I keep hearing this meme that Kubernetes made it hard for Docker to monetize Swarm. But as far as I can tell, Swarm is free and open-source. Docker has never actually charged money for it. What am I missing?
buggeryorkshire 6y ago
They were early in doing decent userland tooling around cgroups etc. Docker Hub too was a genius idea. However their engineering went to crap - tonnes of issues with new versions where networking and other stuff broke, plus the whole "runs as root" thing. People only then realised that Docker wasn't the tool, it was the wrapper around it. All this time they were trying to monetise it and failed pretty much. This is the view as an outsider who's used it for years - anybody got a more accurate view?
narrationbox 6y ago
The short answer is that selling developer tools is hard. Software engineers especially do not like to pay for stuff. We used to be in the DevOps space [0] and it is something that requires heavy enterprise sales to monetise well. There are few companies that truly took off in selling digital shovels, one example is probably Jetbrains. Most developer tooling/platform companies either died or got acquihired once they run out of funding. Flynn and Deis were both acquired and I suspect even the new generation of PaaS like Vercel would have to look for alternate sources of revenue once the VC funding dries up and if they do not achieve profitability. The container space is extremely challenging if you are competing directly with companies like Google with tremendous amount of cash and a willingness to buy developer mindshare. Docker may have popularised containers and singlehandedly brought the ideas of BSD jails mainstream but profiting from it is another thing entirely (you can do pretty well consulting on Kubernetes etc. but that would hardly give unicorn levels of return). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23254394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23254394
- agustif 6y ago
  The eternal question of how much you can capture of the value you create.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  Which microsoft understood well: those dev tools are popular, but can't make money. Well, they have money and they need to become popular again. Deal.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  Why is JetBrains a rare success compared to others?
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    JetBrains seems to do a good job sticking with the core audience of in-the-trenches coders, instead of trying to expand in a way that feels corporatey and enterprisey.
  - 6y ago
m463 6y ago
telemetry. docker has a bunch of telemetry. microsoft is gathering data: linkedin, windows, wsl, github, docker who's who, and what are they doing, compiling, checking in, deploying
fomine3 6y ago
Docker was spun out from dotCloud(Heroku like service) and dotCloud service was sold. I'm curious what if they could monetize from dotCloud.

by atonse 6y ago

the8472 6y ago

They got their business solution (docker-swarm) eaten by kubernetes. So now they're only really the CLI and the public registry.

bgorman 6y ago
On Linux they aren't even the CLI anymore. Buildah and podman are much better
- rb808 6y ago
  I've struggled with podman, esp when following tutorials for docker when podman doesn't quite replicate. Is it worth persisting?
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Yes, it's definitely worth persisting, especially if you use K8s. Podman can import/export Pod objects with the same API as K8s, so it makes it trivial to run the same k8s yaml locally and in a deployed environment.
    - the_duke 6y ago
      Running a light weight Kubernetes setup like k3s locally is a better solution for that use case, imo.
      - freedomben 6y ago
        k3s is something I've heard about but know very little. Does it use a VM? I tried skimming their website but couldn't parse that out.
        the_duke 6y ago
        No VM, it is just a light weight distribution of Kubernetes that can be effortlessly installed and run on Linux.
  - jkulubya 6y ago
    I personally feel that any pain you might face with podman is worth it just for the ability to treat container applications just like any other application on your system https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-shareable-systemd-services https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-shareable-systemd-ser...
- harrygeez 6y ago
  so daemonless (tbh I'm not even sure why is this a good thing) and better security through rootless aside, what are some strong points to switch over?
  - Macha 6y ago
    Rootless is really the big selling point for me. Means I can just let gitlab CI log in as a specific user to deploy my personal apps, without someone compromising gitlab/my gitlab account giving them root on my personal servers. The other advantage is that it can setup containers based on kubernetes xml file or export a local setup to a kube xml file. This is because Podman is really aimed at the small scale setups - if you would have used docker-compose with docker, you might consider Podman, but the export lets you prototype with something convenient locally then export a config when you're happy to test on the big complicated tooling.
- boolcow 6y ago
  How are they "much better"? Docker works extremely well. I build and run Docker containers all over the place and they Just Work.
  - nikanj 6y ago
    They're newer, and fewer people have heard of them.
  - pknopf 6y ago
    Not running as root, for one. There are also many other advantages, such as decoupling the building from the running, and running rootfs tarballs directly, blah blah blah.
  - Majestic121 6y ago
    I had the exact same question, and for podman one of the selling point is that it's a drop in replacement and you don't need root privilege : https://opensource.com/article/19/2/how-does-rootless-podman-work https://opensource.com/article/19/2/how-does-rootless-podman...
  - bgorman 6y ago
    "Docker" is just the userspace component of a Linux kernel feature. "Docker" doesn't run anything, the kernel does. Podman has three main advantages over docker: Not needing to run as root, not requiring a daemon in the background and being packaged directly by linux distros.
    - boolcow 6y ago
      1. systemd runs as root, doesn't bother me that docker daemon does as well, since they do similar things (for me). Only users with access to the socket file have access. 2. I like the idea of not having a daemon but never actually had a problem with this in practice. The daemon has never crashed on me. systemd also has daemons that have also never crashed on me. 3. It's like 3 lines to install the official docker package. This is a non-issue for me. Those do not sound like very meaningful advantages. Certainly not significant enough for me to want to switch from something that Just Works. Thanks for the reply though. I'll be sticking with Docker.
- stevekemp 6y ago
  The downside to podman is that you lose docker-compose. (Yes I know there is podman-compose, but it isn't as complete.) docker-compose has issues of its own, but when you can use it then it works really well.
  - Macha 6y ago
    At least for my use case, I haven't really noticed anything missing from podman-compose when I dumped docker-compose for it. I think ideally they want you to use kube XML for this use case, though I haven't because it doesn't let me associate a named volume with a set of containers. The suggestion is to use bind mounts to the host instead, which feels like an issue for container portability. Podman Compose does not have this limitation
    - hiram112 6y ago
      I tried to use the Podman and Podman-compose stack for a large develop docker environment I run locally. The individual containers build alright, but running the compose with Podman-Compose failed miserably with unhelpful output - just a bunch of Python stack traces. Running it with Docker-Compose just worked. I think that Docker-Compose is just a lot more lenient with Yaml type errors - where things should and shouldn't be surrounded in quotes. Podman-Compose just needs to be a little more forgiving, and continuing to parse the compose files if the semantics can be assumed, even if the syntax is not perfect.
zapita 6y ago
I keep hearing this meme that Kubernetes made it hard for Docker to monetize Swarm. But as far as I can tell, Swarm is free and open-source. Docker has never actually charged money for it. What am I missing?

buggeryorkshire 6y ago

They were early in doing decent userland tooling around cgroups etc. Docker Hub too was a genius idea. However their engineering went to crap - tonnes of issues with new versions where networking and other stuff broke, plus the whole "runs as root" thing. People only then realised that Docker wasn't the tool, it was the wrapper around it. All this time they were trying to monetise it and failed pretty much. This is the view as an outsider who's used it for years - anybody got a more accurate view?

narrationbox 6y ago

The short answer is that selling developer tools is hard. Software engineers especially do not like to pay for stuff. We used to be in the DevOps space [0] and it is something that requires heavy enterprise sales to monetise well. There are few companies that truly took off in selling digital shovels, one example is probably Jetbrains. Most developer tooling/platform companies either died or got acquihired once they run out of funding. Flynn and Deis were both acquired and I suspect even the new generation of PaaS like Vercel would have to look for alternate sources of revenue once the VC funding dries up and if they do not achieve profitability. The container space is extremely challenging if you are competing directly with companies like Google with tremendous amount of cash and a willingness to buy developer mindshare. Docker may have popularised containers and singlehandedly brought the ideas of BSD jails mainstream but profiting from it is another thing entirely (you can do pretty well consulting on Kubernetes etc. but that would hardly give unicorn levels of return). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23254394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23254394

agustif 6y ago
The eternal question of how much you can capture of the value you create.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Which microsoft understood well: those dev tools are popular, but can't make money. Well, they have money and they need to become popular again. Deal.
kyawzazaw 6y ago
Why is JetBrains a rare success compared to others?
- bdcravens 6y ago
  JetBrains seems to do a good job sticking with the core audience of in-the-trenches coders, instead of trying to expand in a way that feels corporatey and enterprisey.
- 6y ago

m463 6y ago

telemetry. docker has a bunch of telemetry. microsoft is gathering data: linkedin, windows, wsl, github, docker who's who, and what are they doing, compiling, checking in, deploying

fomine3 6y ago

Docker was spun out from dotCloud(Heroku like service) and dotCloud service was sold. I'm curious what if they could monetize from dotCloud.