4 ms·

Potato potato. Like it or not, they ditched a bunch of free loaders and likely turned a significant number of them into paid customers (at least until they have

Potato potato. Like it or not, they ditched a bunch of free loaders and likely turned a significant number of them into paid customers (at least until they have time to migrate). Big corporate players were already paying, so from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant.

prepend 4y ago
More likely they disrupted their users and now people are switching off them and hedging against the risk of docker doing disruptive things. They aren’t quite Novell/SCO levels of dumb, but it’s sad to see such a good company spiral into nothingness.
- imiric 4y ago
  And organizations that don't switch, will begrudgingly pay up to avoid impacting their users, but will be left with a sour taste as they've essentially been blackmailed into paying. There's no way they're turning these orgs into long-term customers. Especially now when there are plenty of alternative image hosts. I don't get why they couldn't charge by usage, or have more granular tiers. For small teams and projects $300/yr is not an insignificant amount. What a tonedeaf and greedy decision, communicated in a terribly unclear way.
  - jen20 4y ago
    Just like Amazon released Finch as a response to the conversion of Docker Desktop to pay-only software, no doubt one of the big players will take advantage of this too.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    The cost difference between projects must be enormous. Some comments in this discussing refer to projects with many millions of hits. Mine has 5000. A free tier with 10GB of image storage and some small number of pulls per month would be fine.
- coredog64 4y ago
  The aggressive data retention requirements for the Docker client was the last straw for a lot of enterprises.
candiddevmike 4y ago
Going from $0/yr to $300/yr is a significant kick in the pants, at least for solo devs.
- replygirl 4y ago
  they have a $60/yr plan that does concurrent builds and allows near-daily vuln scans. sure there are better options out there but i find it hard to believe someone who needs more than that isn't getting $20/mo of value from it (that costs what, somewhere around 5 to 15 minutes of work?)
lamontcg 4y ago
> from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant. while slowly killing their brand one cut at a time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    > What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, The name of their company is synonymous with container technology, because they made a nice UI. I think it's fair to say they have a brand. > but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service. That's exactly how they're killing their brand. Maybe it would be better to say they are failing to keep their brand relevant.
piva00 4y ago
The big corp I work for has looked for self-hosting alternatives after their pricing move. There was nothing in Docker actually locking us in them, it was just convenient. I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. It is brilliant, until it's not, I'm very sure they are trying to squeeze as much as they can from the cash cow before it dies, there's almost no reason to actually pay Docker for what it is, and they lost the support from the techies who championed them 10 years ago after these pricing changes. I was one of them, had been using Docker since pre-1.0 days...
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. DockerHub still seems to have the most images out there and is what many people reach for when they need to run some pre-built image. I have my own Nexus which acts as a caching proxy and is also where I upload my own custom container images to use on my own servers, but that sort of setup probably isn't for everyone. Also, Docker Desktop still seems to be the most popular way to run containers in Windows, unless something like Podman Desktop or Rancher Desktop seem stable enough for you.
  - nickcox 4y ago
    Rancher Desktop has been rock solid for my use cases for at least the last year or so.
dkarl 4y ago
Spending decisions aren't always made by penny-pinchers. Sometimes it's inertia, not disrupting the status quo, dance with who brung ya, avoiding work, a hundred reasons why groups of people transition from a free plan to a paid plan with the same company over time if the company hasn't given them a sudden, dramatic, stressful reminder that they need to shop around and always be ready to switch to whoever gives them the best deal. Docker wants to be a sticky default, not a commodity that has to compete with ECR and GCR on cost and features.

prepend 4y ago

More likely they disrupted their users and now people are switching off them and hedging against the risk of docker doing disruptive things. They aren’t quite Novell/SCO levels of dumb, but it’s sad to see such a good company spiral into nothingness.

imiric 4y ago
And organizations that don't switch, will begrudgingly pay up to avoid impacting their users, but will be left with a sour taste as they've essentially been blackmailed into paying. There's no way they're turning these orgs into long-term customers. Especially now when there are plenty of alternative image hosts. I don't get why they couldn't charge by usage, or have more granular tiers. For small teams and projects $300/yr is not an insignificant amount. What a tonedeaf and greedy decision, communicated in a terribly unclear way.
- jen20 4y ago
  Just like Amazon released Finch as a response to the conversion of Docker Desktop to pay-only software, no doubt one of the big players will take advantage of this too.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  The cost difference between projects must be enormous. Some comments in this discussing refer to projects with many millions of hits. Mine has 5000. A free tier with 10GB of image storage and some small number of pulls per month would be fine.
coredog64 4y ago
The aggressive data retention requirements for the Docker client was the last straw for a lot of enterprises.

candiddevmike 4y ago

Going from $0/yr to $300/yr is a significant kick in the pants, at least for solo devs.

replygirl 4y ago
they have a $60/yr plan that does concurrent builds and allows near-daily vuln scans. sure there are better options out there but i find it hard to believe someone who needs more than that isn't getting $20/mo of value from it (that costs what, somewhere around 5 to 15 minutes of work?)

lamontcg 4y ago

> from a MBA penny counting move, it is brilliant. while slowly killing their brand one cut at a time.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service.
- ahepp 4y ago
  > What brand? Yes, they developed and popularized the container workflow, The name of their company is synonymous with container technology, because they made a nice UI. I think it's fair to say they have a brand. > but what does Docker the company have to offer me? Container registry? I can get that at a number of providers who will do their best to offer an API compatible service. That's exactly how they're killing their brand. Maybe it would be better to say they are failing to keep their brand relevant.

piva00 4y ago

The big corp I work for has looked for self-hosting alternatives after their pricing move. There was nothing in Docker actually locking us in them, it was just convenient. I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. It is brilliant, until it's not, I'm very sure they are trying to squeeze as much as they can from the cash cow before it dies, there's almost no reason to actually pay Docker for what it is, and they lost the support from the techies who championed them 10 years ago after these pricing changes. I was one of them, had been using Docker since pre-1.0 days...

KronisLV 4y ago
> I for one haven't touched any official Docker stuff for a while now, free alternatives fill the gap pretty well. DockerHub still seems to have the most images out there and is what many people reach for when they need to run some pre-built image. I have my own Nexus which acts as a caching proxy and is also where I upload my own custom container images to use on my own servers, but that sort of setup probably isn't for everyone. Also, Docker Desktop still seems to be the most popular way to run containers in Windows, unless something like Podman Desktop or Rancher Desktop seem stable enough for you.
- nickcox 4y ago
  Rancher Desktop has been rock solid for my use cases for at least the last year or so.

dkarl 4y ago

Spending decisions aren't always made by penny-pinchers. Sometimes it's inertia, not disrupting the status quo, dance with who brung ya, avoiding work, a hundred reasons why groups of people transition from a free plan to a paid plan with the same company over time if the company hasn't given them a sudden, dramatic, stressful reminder that they need to shop around and always be ready to switch to whoever gives them the best deal. Docker wants to be a sticky default, not a commodity that has to compete with ECR and GCR on cost and features.