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> Seems like they built something that everyone uses as an integral part of their workflow, and they're looking to get paid for it, which, I may be out of date

> Seems like they built something that everyone uses as an integral part of their workflow, and they're looking to get paid for it, which, I may be out of date here, was the entire ethos of this entire site for quite some time 1. Not every widely-used tool needs to be a VC-powered unicorn startup. I'd be pissed if Linus/the Linux Foundation started to demand a per-core licensing fee. I'd probably convince my organization to switch to a BSD, on principle. 2. No one likes a bait-and-switch, and lately, lots of companies see Free/Open Source Software as a "growth hack technique" rather than an actual philosophy, because they'll otherwise face headwinds with a closed-source product. This is akin to the underwear gnome strategy: 1. Author Open Source product 2. Get wide adoption 3. ??? 4. Profit

KronisLV 5y ago
The problem with this is that if Docker Inc goes under, you can say goodbye to Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/ https://hub.docker.com/ Sure, there are alternative repositories and for your own needs you can use anything from Sonatype Nexus, JFrog Artifactory, Gitlab Registry or any of the cloud based ones, but Hub disappearing would be a 100 times worse than the left pad incident in the npm world. Thus, whenever Docker Inc releases a new statement about some paid service that may or may not get more money from large corporations, i force myself to be cautiously optimistic, knowing that the community of hackers will pick up the slack and work around those tools on a more personal scale (e.g. Rancher Desktop vs Docker Desktop). That said, it might just be a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts, but can you imagine the fallout if Hub disappeared? Of course, you should never trust any large corporation, unless you have the source code that you can build the app from yourself. For example, Caddy v1 (a web server) essentially got abandoned with no support, so the few people still using it had to possibly build their own releases and fix the bugs themselves, which was only possible because of source code availability, before eventually migrating to v2 or something else. Therefore, it makes sense to always treat external dependencies, be it services, libraries, even tools like they're hostile - of course, you don't always have the resources to do that in depth, but for example seeing that VS Code is not the only option but we also have VS Codium (https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/) is encouraging.
- NmAmDa 5y ago
  VSCodium doesn't add anything other than build VSCode source without telemetry and provide real FOSS build of VS Code. If VSCode development stopped then VSCodium will stop also.
- maltalex 5y ago
  > The problem with this is that if Docker Inc goes under, you can say goodbye to Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/ https://hub.docker.com/ So you think that Docker Hub is Docker Inc's entire value proposition? And if Docker Inc is nothing more than a glorified blob storage service, how much do you think should company be worth?
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Oh, not at all! I just think that it's the biggest Achilles' heel around Docker at the moment, one that could have catastrophic consequences on the industry. It'd be about as bad as that one time when Debian updates broke GRUB and my server could no longer boot: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-grub-are-broken https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-... Imagine that, but industry wide: - you no longer can use your own images that are stored in Hub - because of that, you cannot deploy new nodes, new environments or really test anything - you also cannot push new images or release new software versions, what you have in production is all that there is - the entire history of your releases is suddenly gone I don't pass judgements on the worth of the company, nor is there any actual way to objectively decide how much it's worth, seeing as they also work on Docker, Docker Compose, Docker Swarm (maintenance mode only though), Docker Desktop and other offerings that are of no relevance to me or others. Either way, i suggest that anyone have a caching Docker registry in front of Docker Hub or any other cloud based registry, for example the JFrog Artifactory one. Frankly, you should be doing that with all of your dependencies, be it Maven, npm, NuGet, pip, gems etc.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Docker hub going down would be a disaster for sure, but I consider "pull image/library from 3rd party hub over the internet on every build" to be an anti-pattern (which is considerably worse with npm, compared to docker). That said,if this is where the value is being provided, perhaps they ought to charge for this service? I guess it's difficult because it's easily commoditized. > but can you imagine the fallout if Hub disappeared? I wish that would actually happen - not forever - if it'd go down for a day or 2 with no ETA for a fix, and the thousands of failed builds/deploys will force organizations to rethink their processes. I think Go's approach on libraries is the way forward - effectively having a caching proxy that you control. I know apt (the package manager) also supports a similar caching scheme.
FPGAhacker 5y ago
> Not every widely-used tool needs to be a VC-powered unicorn startup. Ok, which tools need to be a VC powered unicorn? I’m serious.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  If CUDA were a startup, it could be a VC-powered unicorn (not sure about the deserving, but they'd have decent shot at monetization). Unfortunately, my tool knowledge is not broad due to the limitations of the few tech-stacks I'm familiar with. Honorable mentions: R and Rust, maybe? But I don't see how they'd make the money back (which perhaps is the challenge Docker is running into) edit: Also SQLite! 2nd edit: I completely misunderstood your question, I think. The answer is "none" - there are no tools that need to be unicorns, at least for those that are downloaded and can be run locally. Those that I listed could be.
manigandham 5y ago
Most widely-used tools are not VC-powered unicorn startups and nobody said they needed to be. You're free to create all the tools you want, while others can raise money to develop theirs. If open-source helps the product grow and the community benefits then what's the problem? Who lost here? And why are there headwinds with closed-source products anyway? Open-source doesn't mean free, so what's the objection? Docker the company executed poorly in monetizing their product but there's a lot of undue hate compared to the value it has created. If you don't like it when it's closed-source, and you don't like it when it's open-source, then what do you want exactly?
- sangnoir 5y ago
  Free means free - but if versions 1.0 to X are free today and version X+1 is paid tomorrow, that is a bait-and-switch. There's no hate here, it's just that I (and any competent client company) have no way of knowing if they "won't alter the deal any further". The problem is not with the open-source approach: in chasing growth, they commoditized both areas they could have monetized - the client and the service. If they had charged for either (or both) at first, they wouldn't have gained traction, and some other company would have ate their lunch.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    So they commoditized and failed, or they could've been commercial from the start and someone else would've commoditized it and they still fail. So what? That's the point of a startup, they tried to build something and it didn't work out as a business model. The community still benefited greatly from all the development and new projects that came from this. And what is this other company that would've ate their lunch? How would that company survive exactly? The only objection seems to be the license change, which is still free for the vast majority. Only larger commercial users have to pay, but that seems commensurate with the value they gain from it. Should companies never try to alter terms as the market changes? I don't see why people are entitled to products and services forever, and then hate the company if they try to be sustainable but also hate them if they abandon it.
eecc 5y ago
Community edition and paid Enterprise plug-ins with support is a standard pattern in the OSS market. Not quite bait & switch as you put it, and frankly polishing and idiot proofing tools for production workloads is expensive, and requires competent professionals that definitely need to feed themselves and their family.
- treis 5y ago
  Just because everyone does it doesn't mean that it isn't wrong and illegal.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    That's an extreme claim. How is offering community and enterprise editions potentially wrong or illegal?
    - treis 5y ago
      It's usually a full open source solution and then the enterprise edition gets introduced later to make money. In other words, it's dumping to gain market share and then later trying to use the cornered market to extract profit.
      - manigandham 5y ago
        There is absolutely nothing wrong or illegal with companies offering new additional products. You're not cornered when you can freely choose to buy the enterprise product depending on whether you get any value from it or stick with the open-source version which remains available and has plenty of competition (like Rancher). In fact that entire issue with Docker is that they have too little value to charge for and too much competition to defend against, the exact opposite of dumping to clear out the market.
        eecc 5y ago
        Indeed. I’ve worked with several “enterprises” and often the OSS option was discarded for lack of support for certain enterprise use-case or integration with other commercial products; or for lack of professional support for production issues and SLAs. Obviously this stuff costs effort and time, you can’t expect that to be available for free. It’s also a great opportunity to commercially exploit your knowledge and taste and make a living out of it; rather than curse “the powers that be” on a daily basis, while struggling with closed software whose only purpose has always been milking as much profit possible

KronisLV 5y ago

The problem with this is that if Docker Inc goes under, you can say goodbye to Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/ https://hub.docker.com/ Sure, there are alternative repositories and for your own needs you can use anything from Sonatype Nexus, JFrog Artifactory, Gitlab Registry or any of the cloud based ones, but Hub disappearing would be a 100 times worse than the left pad incident in the npm world. Thus, whenever Docker Inc releases a new statement about some paid service that may or may not get more money from large corporations, i force myself to be cautiously optimistic, knowing that the community of hackers will pick up the slack and work around those tools on a more personal scale (e.g. Rancher Desktop vs Docker Desktop). That said, it might just be a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts, but can you imagine the fallout if Hub disappeared? Of course, you should never trust any large corporation, unless you have the source code that you can build the app from yourself. For example, Caddy v1 (a web server) essentially got abandoned with no support, so the few people still using it had to possibly build their own releases and fix the bugs themselves, which was only possible because of source code availability, before eventually migrating to v2 or something else. Therefore, it makes sense to always treat external dependencies, be it services, libraries, even tools like they're hostile - of course, you don't always have the resources to do that in depth, but for example seeing that VS Code is not the only option but we also have VS Codium (https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/) is encouraging.

NmAmDa 5y ago
VSCodium doesn't add anything other than build VSCode source without telemetry and provide real FOSS build of VS Code. If VSCode development stopped then VSCodium will stop also.
maltalex 5y ago
> The problem with this is that if Docker Inc goes under, you can say goodbye to Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/ https://hub.docker.com/ So you think that Docker Hub is Docker Inc's entire value proposition? And if Docker Inc is nothing more than a glorified blob storage service, how much do you think should company be worth?
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Oh, not at all! I just think that it's the biggest Achilles' heel around Docker at the moment, one that could have catastrophic consequences on the industry. It'd be about as bad as that one time when Debian updates broke GRUB and my server could no longer boot: https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-grub-are-broken https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/debian-and-... Imagine that, but industry wide: - you no longer can use your own images that are stored in Hub - because of that, you cannot deploy new nodes, new environments or really test anything - you also cannot push new images or release new software versions, what you have in production is all that there is - the entire history of your releases is suddenly gone I don't pass judgements on the worth of the company, nor is there any actual way to objectively decide how much it's worth, seeing as they also work on Docker, Docker Compose, Docker Swarm (maintenance mode only though), Docker Desktop and other offerings that are of no relevance to me or others. Either way, i suggest that anyone have a caching Docker registry in front of Docker Hub or any other cloud based registry, for example the JFrog Artifactory one. Frankly, you should be doing that with all of your dependencies, be it Maven, npm, NuGet, pip, gems etc.
sangnoir 5y ago
Docker hub going down would be a disaster for sure, but I consider "pull image/library from 3rd party hub over the internet on every build" to be an anti-pattern (which is considerably worse with npm, compared to docker). That said,if this is where the value is being provided, perhaps they ought to charge for this service? I guess it's difficult because it's easily commoditized. > but can you imagine the fallout if Hub disappeared? I wish that would actually happen - not forever - if it'd go down for a day or 2 with no ETA for a fix, and the thousands of failed builds/deploys will force organizations to rethink their processes. I think Go's approach on libraries is the way forward - effectively having a caching proxy that you control. I know apt (the package manager) also supports a similar caching scheme.

FPGAhacker 5y ago

> Not every widely-used tool needs to be a VC-powered unicorn startup. Ok, which tools need to be a VC powered unicorn? I’m serious.

sangnoir 5y ago
If CUDA were a startup, it could be a VC-powered unicorn (not sure about the deserving, but they'd have decent shot at monetization). Unfortunately, my tool knowledge is not broad due to the limitations of the few tech-stacks I'm familiar with. Honorable mentions: R and Rust, maybe? But I don't see how they'd make the money back (which perhaps is the challenge Docker is running into) edit: Also SQLite! 2nd edit: I completely misunderstood your question, I think. The answer is "none" - there are no tools that need to be unicorns, at least for those that are downloaded and can be run locally. Those that I listed could be.

manigandham 5y ago

Most widely-used tools are not VC-powered unicorn startups and nobody said they needed to be. You're free to create all the tools you want, while others can raise money to develop theirs. If open-source helps the product grow and the community benefits then what's the problem? Who lost here? And why are there headwinds with closed-source products anyway? Open-source doesn't mean free, so what's the objection? Docker the company executed poorly in monetizing their product but there's a lot of undue hate compared to the value it has created. If you don't like it when it's closed-source, and you don't like it when it's open-source, then what do you want exactly?

sangnoir 5y ago
Free means free - but if versions 1.0 to X are free today and version X+1 is paid tomorrow, that is a bait-and-switch. There's no hate here, it's just that I (and any competent client company) have no way of knowing if they "won't alter the deal any further". The problem is not with the open-source approach: in chasing growth, they commoditized both areas they could have monetized - the client and the service. If they had charged for either (or both) at first, they wouldn't have gained traction, and some other company would have ate their lunch.
- manigandham 5y ago
  So they commoditized and failed, or they could've been commercial from the start and someone else would've commoditized it and they still fail. So what? That's the point of a startup, they tried to build something and it didn't work out as a business model. The community still benefited greatly from all the development and new projects that came from this. And what is this other company that would've ate their lunch? How would that company survive exactly? The only objection seems to be the license change, which is still free for the vast majority. Only larger commercial users have to pay, but that seems commensurate with the value they gain from it. Should companies never try to alter terms as the market changes? I don't see why people are entitled to products and services forever, and then hate the company if they try to be sustainable but also hate them if they abandon it.

eecc 5y ago

Community edition and paid Enterprise plug-ins with support is a standard pattern in the OSS market. Not quite bait & switch as you put it, and frankly polishing and idiot proofing tools for production workloads is expensive, and requires competent professionals that definitely need to feed themselves and their family.

treis 5y ago
Just because everyone does it doesn't mean that it isn't wrong and illegal.
- manigandham 5y ago
  That's an extreme claim. How is offering community and enterprise editions potentially wrong or illegal?
  - treis 5y ago
    It's usually a full open source solution and then the enterprise edition gets introduced later to make money. In other words, it's dumping to gain market share and then later trying to use the cornered market to extract profit.
    - manigandham 5y ago
      There is absolutely nothing wrong or illegal with companies offering new additional products. You're not cornered when you can freely choose to buy the enterprise product depending on whether you get any value from it or stick with the open-source version which remains available and has plenty of competition (like Rancher). In fact that entire issue with Docker is that they have too little value to charge for and too much competition to defend against, the exact opposite of dumping to clear out the market.
      - eecc 5y ago
        Indeed. I’ve worked with several “enterprises” and often the OSS option was discarded for lack of support for certain enterprise use-case or integration with other commercial products; or for lack of professional support for production issues and SLAs. Obviously this stuff costs effort and time, you can’t expect that to be available for free. It’s also a great opportunity to commercially exploit your knowledge and taste and make a living out of it; rather than curse “the powers that be” on a daily basis, while struggling with closed software whose only purpose has always been milking as much profit possible