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I'm surprised by this as well, but maybe it was the HN bias that made that impression. My company received the memo from Docker to upgrade to paid version, and

I'm surprised by this as well, but maybe it was the HN bias that made that impression. My company received the memo from Docker to upgrade to paid version, and I helped many to move on to Podman. However there were teams for which getting a Docker Desktop license was easier than the Podman move. I am sure there are many more companies that can easily afford the convenience of Docker Desktop for a trivial fee.

jbverschoor 4y ago
What I don't understand is that devs that get paid 200k+ complain about getting any software license
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  Bad take. It's a tool needed for the business that the business is expected to pay for. The license belongs to the company not the employee.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    In principle, I agree with you. In practice, if there are cheap tools (or, more likely often less cheap services) to fulfill business requirements--and make things including things like traveling more pleasant--I'll often just pay out rather than dealing with approvals and requests which are often out of policy.
  - mlcrypto 4y ago
    And it's against most company policy to install unapproved software and deliver it to customers
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    Sure, but the same can be said for clothing for a real estate agent. Or keeping your personal licenses and credentials up to date.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  Maybe because 200k+ is not net and if you weight in costs of living, costs of subscriptions for freaking everything nowadays, supporting family and other thousands of different things what’s left is not so much anymore? Not every developer is 20 year old tech bro.
- mathverse 4y ago
  It is the license fuckery, being stuck on a single platform, having to pay for upgrades for no reason ( well alright I understand this but it honestly sucks. You usually dont need the features and are happy with what you used) etc etc Pricing virtual assets is hard
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    I dunno.. maintanance, devops, companies keep having to pay for devs.. Hard to switch people.. It's kind of fuckery. It honestly sucks. // imo the thing to look out for is actual vendor / architecture lock-in. So just don't make things complicated yourself... Docker has it's uses, but right now it's being used for literally everything. I've been using jails, vms, and containers since the 90s. Docker is niceish, but somehow got lots of attention. Oh, and you need to be sure your platform won't eat all your revenue.. like oracle :)
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      As long as you're building to OCI, you're fine.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Licenses are PITA to deal with regardless of how much you're being paid. Especially on servers, and especially if for some stupid reason licensed software need internet access to confirm it is licensed, coz that's extra crap that needs to be added on proxy or firewalls and will inevitably break when they change something. If it's "hey, pay us X and we trust you don't cheat us" yeah, it's just extra invoice ,whatever.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
At work, I developed step by step instructions for using Docker on WSL2, the normal CLI way. People liked it, but figured they liked the GUI better. They also argued that they may as well stick to the GUI because there was a team somewhere else in the company that really insisted they need Docker Desktop, so the company will be buying licenses anyway. (I was already working on those instructions when the pricing change reached our attention, so it became a viable free alternative only by coincidence, but still.) One other thing I learned: HN crowd is biased towards people who want to learn and understand their tools to a degree. Workplace use of Docker has large component of people who don't know what Docker is for and don't really care, but they need it for some task, so they want a hassle-minimizing option they can use to get their job done, and then forget about. I bet it's a huge market, not just for Docker, but any other software tool. One that's somewhat alien to the HN audience.
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  Docker (and podman for that matter) running on WSL2 need serious corporate investment in pairing with wsl-vpnkit or a similar hack, publishing in Software Center and maintaining. In hindsight, I would say, it costs several man-months of senior engineers' with good connections in various departments. And this comes on top of productivity losses prior to the solution.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    Docker needs a corporate commitment to tracking who is using the product and maintaining those records for 12 months.
- kmac_ 4y ago
  nftables are now supported so one hassle less, bump up the kernel. I also use Docker in WSL2 to keep Windows clean. I love this setup.
trynewideas 4y ago
But isn't that the same vulnerability to Docker's business that Docker Swarm had? The whole of Docker Desktop isn't replaceable with a drop-in alternative today but parts of it are, and the rest could be very soon if an org with the resources and ability keeps developing things like podman. So what would Docker as a company do when the equivalent of what happens to Swarm happens to Desktop? Pivot again?
microtonal 4y ago
Right, $5/$9/$24 is nothing compared to a developer salary. So if developers switch to Podman, fixing the occasional glitch is going to be more expensive than a Docker subscription. E.g. a while ago there was a bug (caused by a qemu update) that didn't allow Podman to run when the VM used >=4GiB memory [1]. I can imagine that such an issue would result in a large amount of wasted time for triaging and working around this issue. Not meant negatively towards Podman, maintaining such a package in a constantly moving ecosystem is hard. The point is more that you pay Docker to do the extensive testing for you, so that the work-stopping issues are ironed out before they roll out to customers. [1] https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/14303 https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/14303
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > Right, $5/$9/$24 is nothing compared to a developer salary. And yet there are horror stories of finance not approving purchases that would significantly improve productivity. While obviously greater than the $5/9/24 you bring up, I've heard of companies not wanting to buy a second monitor for their engineers, whereas I'd wager the productivity gain would pay for itself in only a couple months.

jbverschoor 4y ago

What I don't understand is that devs that get paid 200k+ complain about getting any software license

alfalfasprout 4y ago
Bad take. It's a tool needed for the business that the business is expected to pay for. The license belongs to the company not the employee.
- ghaff 4y ago
  In principle, I agree with you. In practice, if there are cheap tools (or, more likely often less cheap services) to fulfill business requirements--and make things including things like traveling more pleasant--I'll often just pay out rather than dealing with approvals and requests which are often out of policy.
- mlcrypto 4y ago
  And it's against most company policy to install unapproved software and deliver it to customers
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Sure, but the same can be said for clothing for a real estate agent. Or keeping your personal licenses and credentials up to date.
wiseowise 4y ago
Maybe because 200k+ is not net and if you weight in costs of living, costs of subscriptions for freaking everything nowadays, supporting family and other thousands of different things what’s left is not so much anymore? Not every developer is 20 year old tech bro.
mathverse 4y ago
It is the license fuckery, being stuck on a single platform, having to pay for upgrades for no reason ( well alright I understand this but it honestly sucks. You usually dont need the features and are happy with what you used) etc etc Pricing virtual assets is hard
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  I dunno.. maintanance, devops, companies keep having to pay for devs.. Hard to switch people.. It's kind of fuckery. It honestly sucks. // imo the thing to look out for is actual vendor / architecture lock-in. So just don't make things complicated yourself... Docker has it's uses, but right now it's being used for literally everything. I've been using jails, vms, and containers since the 90s. Docker is niceish, but somehow got lots of attention. Oh, and you need to be sure your platform won't eat all your revenue.. like oracle :)
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    As long as you're building to OCI, you're fine.
ilyt 4y ago
Licenses are PITA to deal with regardless of how much you're being paid. Especially on servers, and especially if for some stupid reason licensed software need internet access to confirm it is licensed, coz that's extra crap that needs to be added on proxy or firewalls and will inevitably break when they change something. If it's "hey, pay us X and we trust you don't cheat us" yeah, it's just extra invoice ,whatever.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

At work, I developed step by step instructions for using Docker on WSL2, the normal CLI way. People liked it, but figured they liked the GUI better. They also argued that they may as well stick to the GUI because there was a team somewhere else in the company that really insisted they need Docker Desktop, so the company will be buying licenses anyway. (I was already working on those instructions when the pricing change reached our attention, so it became a viable free alternative only by coincidence, but still.) One other thing I learned: HN crowd is biased towards people who want to learn and understand their tools to a degree. Workplace use of Docker has large component of people who don't know what Docker is for and don't really care, but they need it for some task, so they want a hassle-minimizing option they can use to get their job done, and then forget about. I bet it's a huge market, not just for Docker, but any other software tool. One that's somewhat alien to the HN audience.

sam_lowry_ 4y ago
Docker (and podman for that matter) running on WSL2 need serious corporate investment in pairing with wsl-vpnkit or a similar hack, publishing in Software Center and maintaining. In hindsight, I would say, it costs several man-months of senior engineers' with good connections in various departments. And this comes on top of productivity losses prior to the solution.
- coredog64 4y ago
  Docker needs a corporate commitment to tracking who is using the product and maintaining those records for 12 months.
kmac_ 4y ago
nftables are now supported so one hassle less, bump up the kernel. I also use Docker in WSL2 to keep Windows clean. I love this setup.

trynewideas 4y ago

But isn't that the same vulnerability to Docker's business that Docker Swarm had? The whole of Docker Desktop isn't replaceable with a drop-in alternative today but parts of it are, and the rest could be very soon if an org with the resources and ability keeps developing things like podman. So what would Docker as a company do when the equivalent of what happens to Swarm happens to Desktop? Pivot again?

microtonal 4y ago

Right, $5/$9/$24 is nothing compared to a developer salary. So if developers switch to Podman, fixing the occasional glitch is going to be more expensive than a Docker subscription. E.g. a while ago there was a bug (caused by a qemu update) that didn't allow Podman to run when the VM used >=4GiB memory [1]. I can imagine that such an issue would result in a large amount of wasted time for triaging and working around this issue. Not meant negatively towards Podman, maintaining such a package in a constantly moving ecosystem is hard. The point is more that you pay Docker to do the extensive testing for you, so that the work-stopping issues are ironed out before they roll out to customers. [1] https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/14303 https://github.com/containers/podman/issues/14303

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> Right, $5/$9/$24 is nothing compared to a developer salary. And yet there are horror stories of finance not approving purchases that would significantly improve productivity. While obviously greater than the $5/9/24 you bring up, I've heard of companies not wanting to buy a second monitor for their engineers, whereas I'd wager the productivity gain would pay for itself in only a couple months.