5 ms·

What is podman’s revenue model? I am perplexed by the conclusion that charging enterprise customers $5/user-month makes the product’s future less secure.

mweberxyz 5y ago
podman has no revenue model, it is an open source project managed by https://github.com/containers https://github.com/containers
- afarrell 5y ago
  So without a revenue model, how would they pay someone to maintain it if the current maintainer[s] need to focus on family or paying their mortgage?
  - nemothekid 5y ago
    When I last looked into it, I came away with the feeling that github.com/containers is pretty much RedHat without any official backing.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      That’s how Red Hat operates mostly. Time will tell if IBM royally messes this up but Red Hat is an upstream first company. If they need something they will put up the developer time but it will be a community project first that they repackage for RHEL. Red Hat’s secret sauce so to speak is the stupid amount of ongoing work it takes to actually maintain a distro, not the software itself.
      - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
        > Red Hat is an upstream first company So is IBM from what I've seen. IBM + RedHat have more contributors working on OSS than Google, surprisingly.
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."
    - nprateem 5y ago
      So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy
      - chousuke 5y ago
        I suspect it's the bait-and-switch approach that annoys people. Podman (and RHEL, through community rebuilds) is free to use even for enterprises; you don't pay for the software itself, you pay for support.
      - znpy 5y ago
        The problem is that red hat wants to monetize on "the big stuff" that is enterprise level software with support, subscription and consulting. Docker Inc wants to monetize on the basic stuff (e.g. a dumb desktop UI)
        bloopernova 5y ago
        Exactly, and lots of developers don't need a desktop UI. They just want something that sits in the background and gets out of their way.
        znpy 5y ago
        Yep. That's why docker inc is mostly failing and has to come up with this dumb stuff whereas red hat is thriving :)
Spivak 5y ago
Because the future of the product now depends on the enterprise customers paying enough for it to not only fund the development but also fund the business backing it. OSS works best when software is needed by many different enterprises that all need it for their business but it isn’t a direct revenue generator. Because then the future is guaranteed since all of those enterprises will contribute patches and it makes financial sense for any of them to take on the maintainership. Docker Desktop has always been a single point of failure in development terms not being OSS, but the community of users just got slashed not that there’s a price tag attached to it and by charging Docker has basically said that the future of the product now depends on it turning a profit instead of before when it only depended on Docker Inc overall turning a profit.
- nprateem 5y ago
  No idea how you came to that conclusion. Do you really think they'll survive without a way of using docker on Macs ? This is an extra revenue stream

mweberxyz 5y ago

podman has no revenue model, it is an open source project managed by https://github.com/containers https://github.com/containers

afarrell 5y ago
So without a revenue model, how would they pay someone to maintain it if the current maintainer[s] need to focus on family or paying their mortgage?
- nemothekid 5y ago
  When I last looked into it, I came away with the feeling that github.com/containers is pretty much RedHat without any official backing.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    That’s how Red Hat operates mostly. Time will tell if IBM royally messes this up but Red Hat is an upstream first company. If they need something they will put up the developer time but it will be a community project first that they repackage for RHEL. Red Hat’s secret sauce so to speak is the stupid amount of ongoing work it takes to actually maintain a distro, not the software itself.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
      > Red Hat is an upstream first company So is IBM from what I've seen. IBM + RedHat have more contributors working on OSS than Google, surprisingly.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  It's from RedHat/IBM. They can give this stuff away to developers because they just want to sell OpenShift to deep pocketed Enterprise customers. And really podman is strategically a defensive move so their Enterprise offerings aren't stuck depending on Docker Inc. Contrast with Docker, whose business is explicitly focused on "developer tools."
  - nprateem 5y ago
    So podman is funded ultimately by enterprises which is OK, but now docker wants to fund their products by enterprises that's a problem for some reason... I could understand this if they were turning the thumbscrews on individuals but all this talk of switching sounds petty and silly and will probably be false economy
    - chousuke 5y ago
      I suspect it's the bait-and-switch approach that annoys people. Podman (and RHEL, through community rebuilds) is free to use even for enterprises; you don't pay for the software itself, you pay for support.
    - znpy 5y ago
      The problem is that red hat wants to monetize on "the big stuff" that is enterprise level software with support, subscription and consulting. Docker Inc wants to monetize on the basic stuff (e.g. a dumb desktop UI)
      - bloopernova 5y ago
        Exactly, and lots of developers don't need a desktop UI. They just want something that sits in the background and gets out of their way.
        znpy 5y ago
        Yep. That's why docker inc is mostly failing and has to come up with this dumb stuff whereas red hat is thriving :)

Spivak 5y ago

Because the future of the product now depends on the enterprise customers paying enough for it to not only fund the development but also fund the business backing it. OSS works best when software is needed by many different enterprises that all need it for their business but it isn’t a direct revenue generator. Because then the future is guaranteed since all of those enterprises will contribute patches and it makes financial sense for any of them to take on the maintainership. Docker Desktop has always been a single point of failure in development terms not being OSS, but the community of users just got slashed not that there’s a price tag attached to it and by charging Docker has basically said that the future of the product now depends on it turning a profit instead of before when it only depended on Docker Inc overall turning a profit.

nprateem 5y ago
No idea how you came to that conclusion. Do you really think they'll survive without a way of using docker on Macs ? This is an extra revenue stream