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It is obvious. This is a common pattern: 1. Offer open-source 100% free product that's absolutely ground breaking, unlike anything else. 2. Get a shitload of

It is obvious. This is a common pattern: 1. Offer open-source 100% free product that's absolutely ground breaking, unlike anything else. 2. Get a shitload of users and free PR machine gets rolling. Network effects kick in. 3. Go to investors with your active user count in excess of millions. 4. Investors go bonkers and their eyes swell up with all the ways they can exploit these addicted-to-free user base. 5. Company has trouble monetizing the users. Users are pissed. 6. We all wonder why they couldn't make billions. It just happened to Elastic search a couple of months ago when Amazon swiped the rug from under them. Good. This should be a lesson to all the companies that want to follow this pattern. Without Step 1, Docker would have had a much more difficult time to get traction and would have to compete on a level ground. So, they short circuit this competition by going full 100% free product route. I have zero empathy for these companies and their investors.

zapita 6y ago
Except Docker had already raised $10M before launching. So they do not match your pattern.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Doesn't matter. $10M initial round to offer free product to get users aboard. The key point is to get users addicted to free. Uber did this by undercutting the entire taxi industry at a loss. Ever wondered why your rides were so cheap!? Jio did the same in India, offer free unlimited internet on their phone service and wipe out the competition.
  - koolba 6y ago
    Who cares? Why not just milk their VCs for the free handouts and then move on like we do with every other VC funded unsustainable service.
  - evanelias 6y ago
    Their initial product was a platform-as-a-service (dotCloud), which wasn't free, aside from the early beta. Docker was essentially a pivot. I see no evidence that the company was founded as a nefarious scheme to get users addicted to a free product.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      You just made my point. The reason why I’ve never heard of dotCloud and literally everyone knows Docker. Docker is popular because it’s free. A lot of people would be upset if they take down their free hosting repositories. As a user, I want to pay for stuff to sustain companies. They can still be open source.
      - evanelias 6y ago
        If enough users had wanted to pay for dotCloud, they wouldn't have needed to pivot in the first place. My understanding (as a complete outsider) is that they raised a $10+ million series A for their PaaS. The PaaS then presumably wasn't successful enough to raise a subsequent round, but one of their technologies (Docker) was, despite the monetization path for it not being clear yet. So they pivoted to focus on that. I'm not sure what other outcome could plausibly happen in this scenario. If they stuck with the PaaS as their main focus, they would have gone out of business many years ago.
Yajirobe 6y ago
> I have zero empathy for these companies and their investors. Wow, imagine being so hateful towards amazing open-source tools
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Open source tools were developed by the community and they're being harrassed now for monetization. How is that being hateful? I am looking out for the community in this sense.
  - botswana99 6y ago
    They are not developed by a 'community'. The developers who build it are paid for by investors. Those investors want a huge return. It's not open source, it's bait and wait
    - cutemonster 6y ago
      Bait and wait and ... But what's step 3? Doesn't seem to work super well, hmm
      - cheriot 6y ago
        MySQL was acquired for 1B. Elastic is currently worth 10B. Redhat was acquired for 34B. What's not working well?
        cutemonster 6y ago
        Good points. So step 3 can be to do an exit, when the software is really popular. I wonder what's next for Elastic. And mongodb etc. And all their users and customers
    - yagizdegirmenci 6y ago
      Exactly, when you take a look at the mainstream "open-source" projects, you 'll see that those projects are all developed and maintained by some people who gets paid to do that. (e.g. Kubernetes, Firecracker, Gvisor, Bottlerocket, Podman)
mvzvm 6y ago
> when Amazon swiped the rug from under them. Good. > I have zero empathy for these companies and their investors. Are you trolling? Or do you want to see all amazing open source tech move behind closed doors and payed walled gardens?
- Spivak 6y ago
  You're presenting a false dichotomy. I think the parent would have preferred these projects be successful and sustainable without the sleazy tactic of baiting users with free stuff, taking a mountain of VC cash, and then desperately trying to find ways of "monetizing" those users. Bleh. F/OSS software works best when it's not a revenue source of the business that develops it. "Hey, I ran into $problem at $work and created $project to fix it! I'm giving it away so that it might solve your problem too! Hit me up on $mailing_list if you want to contribute." Red Hat is pretty much the poster child of this model. They make $0 on all the FOSS software they develop and release to the world but they dogfood it into their own products to collect dividends.
fergie 6y ago
Elastic has a market cap of over $10billion. It is literally one of the most successful tech companies ever.
chuckSu 6y ago
Uh. Sure
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> absolutely ground breaking, unlike anything else Containers existed for decades as a concept and for years on Linux (using lxc or VirtSquare and later nspawn)
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  It is true that the technologies existed for a while. I played with (Free)BSD jails and Solaris Zones long before Docker. Docker however made things "trivial" with the integration from container building, to public registry and docker-compose, which can make developer lives (depending on domain) much nicer. With jails and zones it was never as convenient.
  - seniorThrowaway 6y ago
    That was docker's real value add, making it easy and developer centric. Previous containerization technologies were heavily ops-centric. I come from an ops background and I remember thinking at the time that Docker was in some ways a developer workaround to barriers that ops set up to limit what they could do and protect them from themselves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mrkeen 6y ago
> 5. Company has trouble monetizing the users. Users are pissed. Are we pissed? Docker hasn't started showing me ads or spewing MOTDs asking for donations. I haven't run into limitations that would have me purchase an upgrade. It hasn't been bought by a proprietary company that would make me start worrying about its licencing. It's a solid workhorse that's been at all my previous jobs and will be at all my future jobs for the foreseeable future. Most criticisms of it boil down to "there are other container technologies".

zapita 6y ago

Except Docker had already raised $10M before launching. So they do not match your pattern.

systemvoltage 6y ago
Doesn't matter. $10M initial round to offer free product to get users aboard. The key point is to get users addicted to free. Uber did this by undercutting the entire taxi industry at a loss. Ever wondered why your rides were so cheap!? Jio did the same in India, offer free unlimited internet on their phone service and wipe out the competition.
- koolba 6y ago
  Who cares? Why not just milk their VCs for the free handouts and then move on like we do with every other VC funded unsustainable service.
- evanelias 6y ago
  Their initial product was a platform-as-a-service (dotCloud), which wasn't free, aside from the early beta. Docker was essentially a pivot. I see no evidence that the company was founded as a nefarious scheme to get users addicted to a free product.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    You just made my point. The reason why I’ve never heard of dotCloud and literally everyone knows Docker. Docker is popular because it’s free. A lot of people would be upset if they take down their free hosting repositories. As a user, I want to pay for stuff to sustain companies. They can still be open source.
    - evanelias 6y ago
      If enough users had wanted to pay for dotCloud, they wouldn't have needed to pivot in the first place. My understanding (as a complete outsider) is that they raised a $10+ million series A for their PaaS. The PaaS then presumably wasn't successful enough to raise a subsequent round, but one of their technologies (Docker) was, despite the monetization path for it not being clear yet. So they pivoted to focus on that. I'm not sure what other outcome could plausibly happen in this scenario. If they stuck with the PaaS as their main focus, they would have gone out of business many years ago.

Yajirobe 6y ago

> I have zero empathy for these companies and their investors. Wow, imagine being so hateful towards amazing open-source tools

systemvoltage 6y ago
Open source tools were developed by the community and they're being harrassed now for monetization. How is that being hateful? I am looking out for the community in this sense.
- botswana99 6y ago
  They are not developed by a 'community'. The developers who build it are paid for by investors. Those investors want a huge return. It's not open source, it's bait and wait
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    Bait and wait and ... But what's step 3? Doesn't seem to work super well, hmm
    - cheriot 6y ago
      MySQL was acquired for 1B. Elastic is currently worth 10B. Redhat was acquired for 34B. What's not working well?
      - cutemonster 6y ago
        Good points. So step 3 can be to do an exit, when the software is really popular. I wonder what's next for Elastic. And mongodb etc. And all their users and customers
  - yagizdegirmenci 6y ago
    Exactly, when you take a look at the mainstream "open-source" projects, you 'll see that those projects are all developed and maintained by some people who gets paid to do that. (e.g. Kubernetes, Firecracker, Gvisor, Bottlerocket, Podman)

mvzvm 6y ago

> when Amazon swiped the rug from under them. Good. > I have zero empathy for these companies and their investors. Are you trolling? Or do you want to see all amazing open source tech move behind closed doors and payed walled gardens?

Spivak 6y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy. I think the parent would have preferred these projects be successful and sustainable without the sleazy tactic of baiting users with free stuff, taking a mountain of VC cash, and then desperately trying to find ways of "monetizing" those users. Bleh. F/OSS software works best when it's not a revenue source of the business that develops it. "Hey, I ran into $problem at $work and created $project to fix it! I'm giving it away so that it might solve your problem too! Hit me up on $mailing_list if you want to contribute." Red Hat is pretty much the poster child of this model. They make $0 on all the FOSS software they develop and release to the world but they dogfood it into their own products to collect dividends.

fergie 6y ago

Elastic has a market cap of over $10billion. It is literally one of the most successful tech companies ever.

chuckSu 6y ago

Uh. Sure

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

> absolutely ground breaking, unlike anything else Containers existed for decades as a concept and for years on Linux (using lxc or VirtSquare and later nspawn)

johannes1234321 6y ago
It is true that the technologies existed for a while. I played with (Free)BSD jails and Solaris Zones long before Docker. Docker however made things "trivial" with the integration from container building, to public registry and docker-compose, which can make developer lives (depending on domain) much nicer. With jails and zones it was never as convenient.
- seniorThrowaway 6y ago
  That was docker's real value add, making it easy and developer centric. Previous containerization technologies were heavily ops-centric. I come from an ops background and I remember thinking at the time that Docker was in some ways a developer workaround to barriers that ops set up to limit what they could do and protect them from themselves.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

mrkeen 6y ago

> 5. Company has trouble monetizing the users. Users are pissed. Are we pissed? Docker hasn't started showing me ads or spewing MOTDs asking for donations. I haven't run into limitations that would have me purchase an upgrade. It hasn't been bought by a proprietary company that would make me start worrying about its licencing. It's a solid workhorse that's been at all my previous jobs and will be at all my future jobs for the foreseeable future. Most criticisms of it boil down to "there are other container technologies".