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you're right. And the caveat is still that Docker Desktop costs $240 a year only for companies with $10m+ in revenue or 250+ employees. Free for everyone else.

you're right. And the caveat is still that Docker Desktop costs $240 a year only for companies with $10m+ in revenue or 250+ employees. Free for everyone else. I don't get the whole "Let's spend weeks rewriting our build infrastructure to save $240 a year" strategy going on here.

freeplay 5y ago
$240 a year * 250+ employees is 60k at the very least. My company has over 3500 engineers. That's almost a million dollars in new spend and you gain basically nothing. It's a product the entire org has already been using for a long time, now you just have to pay a million dollars a year to use it.
- oefnak 5y ago
  For all those engineers to learn a different tool will cost you way more.
- yunohn 5y ago
  You gain support. And the continued existence of the company that developed Docker CLI & GUI. Surely that’s important to your 3500 engineer company’s future too?
ayewo 5y ago
> I don't get the whole "Let's spend weeks rewriting our build infrastructure to save $240 a year" strategy going on here. I think that's because 2 things are at play here: 1. People are busy and often rarely read past the headline announcing the change, so they are unlikely to know of the caveat. 2. People don't like being taxed at the infrastructure level, so the default price for plumbing tools like Docker is $0. What's the assurance that the $240/yr will not rise to $2400/yr a year later, especially if they fail to hit their revenue numbers? Once the glove comes off, it's so much safer to cap your costs today by seeking out an alternative, rather than be confronted with uncapped costs (or any kind of vendor uncertainty) in the future.
- yunohn 5y ago
  But who is guaranteeing a free alternative? Someone has to build and maintain it, and as time goes by, they will also want compensation.
- doctor_eval 5y ago
  I think there’s a third problem. Docker on MacOS is still pretty buggy. After all these years there are still issues that cause it to use 30% CPU when idle on my Mac, and I’m sure I’m not alone. If docker on Mac was rock solid then I’d probably look more kindly on this. We aren’t even big enough for this to affect us, it is just one more reason for us to look at how we can remove docker from our desktop infrastructure and replace it with something that makes us more efficient.
  - laurencerowe 5y ago
    > After all these years there are still issues that cause it to use 30% CPU when idle on my Mac, and I’m sure I’m not alone. I had the same frustrations until the other day I saw a tip to enable 'Use the new Virtualization framework' under Preferences -> Experimental Features. Since then Docker's background CPU usage has dropped to 1% and I no longer bother stopping it when I'm not using it.
acdha 5y ago
I definitely share your thinking on the costs but there is one complication: purchasing things can be surprisingly hard in large organizations, and if Docker doesn’t have the blessing as an enterprise procurement that can be far more in overhead than the base cost. For people in .gov, that can be waiting a fiscal year to get it in the budget and slogging through paperwork to show that they’re in compliance: https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/1432802347483271169 https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/1432802347483271169
ViViDboarder 5y ago
Also, build infra doesn’t even have to change. Only development tools. I just uninstalled Docker Desktop and installed minikube (single binary) and I’m all set.

freeplay 5y ago

$240 a year * 250+ employees is 60k at the very least. My company has over 3500 engineers. That's almost a million dollars in new spend and you gain basically nothing. It's a product the entire org has already been using for a long time, now you just have to pay a million dollars a year to use it.

oefnak 5y ago
For all those engineers to learn a different tool will cost you way more.
yunohn 5y ago
You gain support. And the continued existence of the company that developed Docker CLI & GUI. Surely that’s important to your 3500 engineer company’s future too?

ayewo 5y ago

> I don't get the whole "Let's spend weeks rewriting our build infrastructure to save $240 a year" strategy going on here. I think that's because 2 things are at play here: 1. People are busy and often rarely read past the headline announcing the change, so they are unlikely to know of the caveat. 2. People don't like being taxed at the infrastructure level, so the default price for plumbing tools like Docker is $0. What's the assurance that the $240/yr will not rise to $2400/yr a year later, especially if they fail to hit their revenue numbers? Once the glove comes off, it's so much safer to cap your costs today by seeking out an alternative, rather than be confronted with uncapped costs (or any kind of vendor uncertainty) in the future.

yunohn 5y ago
But who is guaranteeing a free alternative? Someone has to build and maintain it, and as time goes by, they will also want compensation.
doctor_eval 5y ago
I think there’s a third problem. Docker on MacOS is still pretty buggy. After all these years there are still issues that cause it to use 30% CPU when idle on my Mac, and I’m sure I’m not alone. If docker on Mac was rock solid then I’d probably look more kindly on this. We aren’t even big enough for this to affect us, it is just one more reason for us to look at how we can remove docker from our desktop infrastructure and replace it with something that makes us more efficient.
- laurencerowe 5y ago
  > After all these years there are still issues that cause it to use 30% CPU when idle on my Mac, and I’m sure I’m not alone. I had the same frustrations until the other day I saw a tip to enable 'Use the new Virtualization framework' under Preferences -> Experimental Features. Since then Docker's background CPU usage has dropped to 1% and I no longer bother stopping it when I'm not using it.

acdha 5y ago

I definitely share your thinking on the costs but there is one complication: purchasing things can be surprisingly hard in large organizations, and if Docker doesn’t have the blessing as an enterprise procurement that can be far more in overhead than the base cost. For people in .gov, that can be waiting a fiscal year to get it in the budget and slogging through paperwork to show that they’re in compliance: https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/1432802347483271169 https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/1432802347483271169

ViViDboarder 5y ago

Also, build infra doesn’t even have to change. Only development tools. I just uninstalled Docker Desktop and installed minikube (single binary) and I’m all set.