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It’s not for performance. It’s to settle an old grudge with Docker. All code coming from Docker must be erased. See also: podman; cri-o; buildah.

by zapita 6y ago

SEJeff 6y ago
Grudge? You mean when Jessie Frazelle walked around dockercon with a badge saying, “I will not merge patches for systemd” just out of principal? In hindsight it is fairly obvious picking a fight at redhat summit was a very poor long term strategy from docker. It forced them to ultimately sell the orchestration parts of their business and massively limit the free tier of docker hub.
- zapita 6y ago
  Thank you for illustrating my point perfectly. “Grudge?” (proceeds with details of grudge).
  - kbenson 6y ago
    What was described could be the basis of a grudge, or it could be that Red Hat were convinced that the current project would not accept changes Red Hat would benefit by even if it helped many other people. At that point, and at the size of Red Hat and how important this technology is becoming for them, it only makes sense for them to secure some of the technological foundations they rely on. It costs them very little in resources in relation to the business they are basing on that technology. I don't think it's a stretch to look at the events as described and see them as Red Hat doing what they need to work around someone else's grudge. It could be any number of things, but I don't think the information presented so far lends itself towards Red Hat having a grudge.
    - zapita 6y ago
      runc, containerd and the docker client are critical infrastructure to a whole lot of people, and they seem to be doing just fine running it and, when needed, contributing back. Only Red Hat seems to have a problem with using those projects without forking or re-writing them. Could it be because Red Hat considers it of strategic importance for their business, not just for those projects to be reliable (they are), but to be controlled by them to a sufficient degree that they can act as gatekeepers to upstream, thus preserving their business model?
      - kbenson 6y ago
        That could be, but if Frazelle did actually walk around with a button saying “I will not merge patches for systemd” I think it's simpler and safer to assume Red Hat decided that relying on Docker was risky given how important it was to their future products and the apparent animus on display from the Docker maintainer. If I carpool with someone and they like to go around and loudly proclaim "I refuse to listen to anything kbenson has to say", maybe I find someone else to carpool with or drive myself? That only seems prudent. That doesn't mean I have a grudge against that person, it just means I don't want to trust them with getting me to and from work anymore.
        zapita 6y ago
        It’s no secret that there were tensions betwen Docker and Red Hat that culminated around 2016, when Red Hat’s desire to capitalize on the success of containers ran into Docker’s own ambitions to compete with Red Hat. Those tensions were eventually resolved (or at least diminished) by Red Hat shifting gears to Kubernetes as their “next Linux”. The drama you’re talking about is from that period - 2015-16. But “crun” was launched in 2020, a full four years later. Frazelle left Docker years ago, as well as most of the people involved in those feuds. Runc, containerd and docker are chugging along drama-free, and are maintained by multi-vendor teams. There is no interest from anyone outside of Red Hat in forking or re-writing those tools. It’s just a tremendous waste of energy and in the end will be problematic for Red Hat, because they will be building their platform on less used and therefore less reliable code. The world’s container infrastructure runs on containerd, runc and docker. Not crio, crun and podman. Someone at Red Hat clearly is having trouble accepting that reality, in my opinion because they’re having trouble moving on from old grudges. I really wish they did, because all of that wasted engineering effort could be deployed to solve more pressing problems.
        kbenson 6y ago
        > It’s just a tremendous waste of energy > The world’s container infrastructure runs on containerd, runc and docker I don't consider alternate implementations of widely used software to be wasted evergy almost ever. Was Clang a waste of energy because everyone was using GCC? There are many reasons why multiple implementations may be useful, competition and being able to cater to slightly different common use cases obvious ones. I'm not sure why any end user would wish for there not to be multiple open source projects looking to satisfy a similar technical need. > in the end will be problematic for Red Hat That may be, but I don't really care about whether it's good for Red Hat. I care that it increased user choice and maybe at some point features and capabilities offered to users (whether through podman or pressure on docker).
hda111 6y ago
So why does podman include code from docker?
- zapita 6y ago
  Excellent question, especially since the code is copy-pasted without crediting the original authors. Could it be that they’re trying to minimize the role of Docker as much as possible even when re-using their code?
  - tpush 6y ago
    > Excellent question, especially since the code is copy-pasted without crediting the original authors. That seems like a serious allegation. Can you back that up?
    - zapita 6y ago
      It’s right there in the repo history. Start from the first commits. I don’t know how serious of an allegation it is: copy-pasting open-source code without crediting it properly is rude, but not illegal.
      - notriddle 6y ago
        No, that’s totally illegal. The Docker Engine is licensed under the Apache-2.0 terms, which require attribution.
      - SEJeff 6y ago
        It is actually against copyright law, and redhat legal would take any allegations very seriously. What in specific do you think is copy and pasted code?
        hda111 6y ago
        Docker is properly attributed to, see https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/a4cc7aa79e050c976e9c44d005e44e5dce5a850a/NOTICE https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/a4cc7aa79e050c976... I think OP wanted to say that Podman hates Docker what is not I feel when I'm interacting with the community there. People who use Podman do it because of it's additional features that Docker does not have, like starting an Container from a rootfs or mounting the currect directory in a container using "." as path. Also building containers using a shellscript is supported. No need to learn the Dockerfile syntax. There are lot of small things that make Podman better integrated into Linux systems: running the container via systemd is a lot more intuitive.

It’s not for performance. It’s to settle an old grudge with Docker. All code coming from Docker must be erased. See also: podman; cri-o; buildah.

by zapita 6y ago

It’s not for performance. It’s to settle an old grudge with Docker. All code coming from Docker must be erased. See also: podman; cri-o; buildah.

SEJeff 6y ago

Grudge? You mean when Jessie Frazelle walked around dockercon with a badge saying, “I will not merge patches for systemd” just out of principal? In hindsight it is fairly obvious picking a fight at redhat summit was a very poor long term strategy from docker. It forced them to ultimately sell the orchestration parts of their business and massively limit the free tier of docker hub.

zapita 6y ago
Thank you for illustrating my point perfectly. “Grudge?” (proceeds with details of grudge).
- kbenson 6y ago
  What was described could be the basis of a grudge, or it could be that Red Hat were convinced that the current project would not accept changes Red Hat would benefit by even if it helped many other people. At that point, and at the size of Red Hat and how important this technology is becoming for them, it only makes sense for them to secure some of the technological foundations they rely on. It costs them very little in resources in relation to the business they are basing on that technology. I don't think it's a stretch to look at the events as described and see them as Red Hat doing what they need to work around someone else's grudge. It could be any number of things, but I don't think the information presented so far lends itself towards Red Hat having a grudge.
  - zapita 6y ago
    runc, containerd and the docker client are critical infrastructure to a whole lot of people, and they seem to be doing just fine running it and, when needed, contributing back. Only Red Hat seems to have a problem with using those projects without forking or re-writing them. Could it be because Red Hat considers it of strategic importance for their business, not just for those projects to be reliable (they are), but to be controlled by them to a sufficient degree that they can act as gatekeepers to upstream, thus preserving their business model?
    - kbenson 6y ago
      That could be, but if Frazelle did actually walk around with a button saying “I will not merge patches for systemd” I think it's simpler and safer to assume Red Hat decided that relying on Docker was risky given how important it was to their future products and the apparent animus on display from the Docker maintainer. If I carpool with someone and they like to go around and loudly proclaim "I refuse to listen to anything kbenson has to say", maybe I find someone else to carpool with or drive myself? That only seems prudent. That doesn't mean I have a grudge against that person, it just means I don't want to trust them with getting me to and from work anymore.
      - zapita 6y ago
        It’s no secret that there were tensions betwen Docker and Red Hat that culminated around 2016, when Red Hat’s desire to capitalize on the success of containers ran into Docker’s own ambitions to compete with Red Hat. Those tensions were eventually resolved (or at least diminished) by Red Hat shifting gears to Kubernetes as their “next Linux”. The drama you’re talking about is from that period - 2015-16. But “crun” was launched in 2020, a full four years later. Frazelle left Docker years ago, as well as most of the people involved in those feuds. Runc, containerd and docker are chugging along drama-free, and are maintained by multi-vendor teams. There is no interest from anyone outside of Red Hat in forking or re-writing those tools. It’s just a tremendous waste of energy and in the end will be problematic for Red Hat, because they will be building their platform on less used and therefore less reliable code. The world’s container infrastructure runs on containerd, runc and docker. Not crio, crun and podman. Someone at Red Hat clearly is having trouble accepting that reality, in my opinion because they’re having trouble moving on from old grudges. I really wish they did, because all of that wasted engineering effort could be deployed to solve more pressing problems.
        kbenson 6y ago
        > It’s just a tremendous waste of energy > The world’s container infrastructure runs on containerd, runc and docker I don't consider alternate implementations of widely used software to be wasted evergy almost ever. Was Clang a waste of energy because everyone was using GCC? There are many reasons why multiple implementations may be useful, competition and being able to cater to slightly different common use cases obvious ones. I'm not sure why any end user would wish for there not to be multiple open source projects looking to satisfy a similar technical need. > in the end will be problematic for Red Hat That may be, but I don't really care about whether it's good for Red Hat. I care that it increased user choice and maybe at some point features and capabilities offered to users (whether through podman or pressure on docker).

hda111 6y ago

So why does podman include code from docker?

zapita 6y ago
Excellent question, especially since the code is copy-pasted without crediting the original authors. Could it be that they’re trying to minimize the role of Docker as much as possible even when re-using their code?
- tpush 6y ago
  > Excellent question, especially since the code is copy-pasted without crediting the original authors. That seems like a serious allegation. Can you back that up?
  - zapita 6y ago
    It’s right there in the repo history. Start from the first commits. I don’t know how serious of an allegation it is: copy-pasting open-source code without crediting it properly is rude, but not illegal.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      No, that’s totally illegal. The Docker Engine is licensed under the Apache-2.0 terms, which require attribution.
    - SEJeff 6y ago
      It is actually against copyright law, and redhat legal would take any allegations very seriously. What in specific do you think is copy and pasted code?
      - hda111 6y ago
        Docker is properly attributed to, see https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/a4cc7aa79e050c976e9c44d005e44e5dce5a850a/NOTICE https://github.com/containers/storage/blob/a4cc7aa79e050c976... I think OP wanted to say that Podman hates Docker what is not I feel when I'm interacting with the community there. People who use Podman do it because of it's additional features that Docker does not have, like starting an Container from a rootfs or mounting the currect directory in a container using "." as path. Also building containers using a shellscript is supported. No need to learn the Dockerfile syntax. There are lot of small things that make Podman better integrated into Linux systems: running the container via systemd is a lot more intuitive.