7 ms·

Read: We won't do it today or next week, since we got a bunch of negative publicity, but don't actually address why they didn't catch that it was a terrible pol

by genmud 4y ago

Read: We won't do it today or next week, since we got a bunch of negative publicity, but don't actually address why they didn't catch that it was a terrible policy. They describe that they have come to the light and now realize the policy was bad, as well as the communication around it, but don't describe how they are actually going to address this fundamental misalignment with their userbase and out-of touch decision making.

cpuguy83 4y ago
No business should ever build their business on the free tier of some other business. Ever. The change in position in this blog post does not change that. The change that precipitated this blog post also does not change that.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  I agree, but there's some nuance to it. I self-host 100% of my dev environment and tools. I don't care too much about getting services from Docker Hub, regardless of whether it's free or paid. However, I do care about my namespaces and I don't want someone acting as if they're me, even if it's innocent and unintentional. Because of that I feel like I'm forced to deal with services like Docker Hub. It's a net negative for me to begin with, because I have to take the time to register an account, but it gets really awful if everyone starts asking for money to simply own a namespace. On the Docker Hub side, there can't be much cost in letting me hold my namespace and, because I've got my preferred namespace there, it makes it low friction to check them out as the first option if I ever need reliable image hosting that scales. There's some reciprocal benefit IMO. In principal I should probably be paying them something because all of my self-hosted stuff runs on Docker.
  - cpuguy83 4y ago
    But you don't need a team account to squat a namespace. Username and email are totally separate.
    - donmcronald 4y ago
      True, but I always use a team or an organization if it’s an option because it feels more correct to me if the namespace is transferable. If a dedicated user account is the only option I’ll take it. Ex: Docker offered to convert namespaces to normal accounts which I would have been happy with.
caturopath 4y ago
You have to take the W sometimes.
- genmud 4y ago
  If they don't change the way they make decisions, its only a slight delay... not a Win. A win would be a commitment to never do this again (ideally), or put in something that binds them to provide <x> amount of notice.
  - Osiris 4y ago
    No company will ever say they will never do something in the future like that because the future is unknowable and who knows what circumstances will come up. What we can hope for is they learned something from this so when a hard decision like this must be made they’ll use a different approach.
- Kalium 4y ago
  Is this really a W? It seems more like a stay of execution.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Stay of execution is a W. We all due someday.
  - donmcronald 4y ago
    I think this is a big W. As soon as one company gets away with leveraging namespaces to extort money the flood gates will open and everyone is going to have their hand out asking you to pay just to maintain a consistent identity across platforms. It's time to make sure you've got trademarks on your namespaces IMO (if possible). At least that gives the upside of being able to make legal demands to companies that don't do enough to prevent impersonation and namespace squatting.
Quekid5 4y ago
At least we know that we're on borrowed time and maybe the wider ecosystem can come up with a decent (distributed, even?) alternative instead of everybody panicking and just moving toward another rug-pull.
- rc_mob 4y ago
  Yup. Its still happening even if delayed a year or two and obfuscated by some complications.
twblalock 4y ago
It's incredibly tiresome that the first post on HN whenever a company does a press release is going to be from someone who will never be happy no matter what was said. "What does take responsibility mean?" "This is just PR fluff". "They are just saving face." Criticism of good things because the poster didn't like the motivation. Stuff like that. Did you really think the company was going to bare their soul to you like you were their psychiatrist or their priest? Do you think you are even entitled to that? Commenting about whether or not this is a good decision is valuable. Complaining about the content of PR fluff is not.
- ljm 4y ago
  Cynicism is cheap
- genmud 4y ago
  These decisions should never have seen the light of day, let alone a policy that was communicated in the way they did. Why should we cheer on PR and product folks trying to break their fucking arms patting themselves on the back for walking back an incredibly disruptive, short sighted and user-hostile decision?
  - PUSH_AX 4y ago
    Because A) of all the permutations of follow up decisions that could have been made, this falls on the "good choice" side, and B) this isn't "pat on the back" situation, this is a save face situation.
- fwlr 4y ago
  It’s no more or less tiresome than a press release is itself. Whatever the material contents, a press release has “positivity” set to 1.0 (or as close to 1.0 as permitted by law and professional standards). This upsets the balance of the world, and that balance can be restored by submitting a reply with “positivity” set to 0.0 (or as close to 0.0 as permitted by law and standards of etiquette). Analogous to “someone who will never be happy no matter what was said”, the tone of the press release will always be happy no matter what they have to say. It seems very natural - almost inevitable, even - that someone will reply to an artificially max-positive document with an artificially max-negative comment. (Personally, I made peace with the tiresome nature of both press releases and critical replies by viewing it as an informal application of Laplace’s Rule - add one success and one failure to the total count to more accurately estimate the real underlying probability. The press release presents one observation guaranteed to be as positive as possible, and the inevitable critical reply presents another observation guaranteed to be as negative as possible, so with those two in hand you can look at other observations and get a better final estimation.)
dymk 4y ago
Negative generic FUD
wefarrell 4y ago
Yup, this should be addressed with the same level of detail and transparency as a postmortem for a technical failure. What were the multiple points of failure that led to this decision and how are they altering their operations from preventing something like this from happening again? Without deep transparency they will lose trust.
nerdjon 4y ago
100% this. If this wasn’t Docker’s first time making a bad decision maybe I would think that this decision is on hold indefinitely. But it isn’t and they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. I will be continuing with my original plan of communicating ideally not using DockerHub internally and making every effort remove our reliance off of it.
burnished 4y ago
>After listening to feedback and consulting our community, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision in sunsetting our Free Team plan. Last week we felt our communications were terrible but our policy was sound. It’s now clear that both the communications and the policy were wrong, so we’re reversing course and no longer sunsetting the Free Team plan Seriously, what else do you want? This kind of pointless whinging is just noise. They flat out said they were wrong in the first place.
- genmud 4y ago
  I have already stated what I want, but I’ll spell it out 1) transparency into who was responsible for this decision 2) how exactly this decision was made and how they came to the conclusion that it was sound policy 3) how they are going to prevent these decisions that are disruptive, user-hostile and short sighted in the future 4) some degree of commitment they won’t sunset this in the future when people aren’t as upset

by genmud 4y ago

cpuguy83 4y ago

No business should ever build their business on the free tier of some other business. Ever. The change in position in this blog post does not change that. The change that precipitated this blog post also does not change that.

donmcronald 4y ago
I agree, but there's some nuance to it. I self-host 100% of my dev environment and tools. I don't care too much about getting services from Docker Hub, regardless of whether it's free or paid. However, I do care about my namespaces and I don't want someone acting as if they're me, even if it's innocent and unintentional. Because of that I feel like I'm forced to deal with services like Docker Hub. It's a net negative for me to begin with, because I have to take the time to register an account, but it gets really awful if everyone starts asking for money to simply own a namespace. On the Docker Hub side, there can't be much cost in letting me hold my namespace and, because I've got my preferred namespace there, it makes it low friction to check them out as the first option if I ever need reliable image hosting that scales. There's some reciprocal benefit IMO. In principal I should probably be paying them something because all of my self-hosted stuff runs on Docker.
- cpuguy83 4y ago
  But you don't need a team account to squat a namespace. Username and email are totally separate.
  - donmcronald 4y ago
    True, but I always use a team or an organization if it’s an option because it feels more correct to me if the namespace is transferable. If a dedicated user account is the only option I’ll take it. Ex: Docker offered to convert namespaces to normal accounts which I would have been happy with.

caturopath 4y ago

You have to take the W sometimes.

genmud 4y ago
If they don't change the way they make decisions, its only a slight delay... not a Win. A win would be a commitment to never do this again (ideally), or put in something that binds them to provide <x> amount of notice.
- Osiris 4y ago
  No company will ever say they will never do something in the future like that because the future is unknowable and who knows what circumstances will come up. What we can hope for is they learned something from this so when a hard decision like this must be made they’ll use a different approach.
Kalium 4y ago
Is this really a W? It seems more like a stay of execution.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  Stay of execution is a W. We all due someday.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  I think this is a big W. As soon as one company gets away with leveraging namespaces to extort money the flood gates will open and everyone is going to have their hand out asking you to pay just to maintain a consistent identity across platforms. It's time to make sure you've got trademarks on your namespaces IMO (if possible). At least that gives the upside of being able to make legal demands to companies that don't do enough to prevent impersonation and namespace squatting.

Quekid5 4y ago

At least we know that we're on borrowed time and maybe the wider ecosystem can come up with a decent (distributed, even?) alternative instead of everybody panicking and just moving toward another rug-pull.

rc_mob 4y ago
Yup. Its still happening even if delayed a year or two and obfuscated by some complications.

twblalock 4y ago

It's incredibly tiresome that the first post on HN whenever a company does a press release is going to be from someone who will never be happy no matter what was said. "What does take responsibility mean?" "This is just PR fluff". "They are just saving face." Criticism of good things because the poster didn't like the motivation. Stuff like that. Did you really think the company was going to bare their soul to you like you were their psychiatrist or their priest? Do you think you are even entitled to that? Commenting about whether or not this is a good decision is valuable. Complaining about the content of PR fluff is not.

ljm 4y ago
Cynicism is cheap
genmud 4y ago
These decisions should never have seen the light of day, let alone a policy that was communicated in the way they did. Why should we cheer on PR and product folks trying to break their fucking arms patting themselves on the back for walking back an incredibly disruptive, short sighted and user-hostile decision?
- PUSH_AX 4y ago
  Because A) of all the permutations of follow up decisions that could have been made, this falls on the "good choice" side, and B) this isn't "pat on the back" situation, this is a save face situation.
fwlr 4y ago
It’s no more or less tiresome than a press release is itself. Whatever the material contents, a press release has “positivity” set to 1.0 (or as close to 1.0 as permitted by law and professional standards). This upsets the balance of the world, and that balance can be restored by submitting a reply with “positivity” set to 0.0 (or as close to 0.0 as permitted by law and standards of etiquette). Analogous to “someone who will never be happy no matter what was said”, the tone of the press release will always be happy no matter what they have to say. It seems very natural - almost inevitable, even - that someone will reply to an artificially max-positive document with an artificially max-negative comment. (Personally, I made peace with the tiresome nature of both press releases and critical replies by viewing it as an informal application of Laplace’s Rule - add one success and one failure to the total count to more accurately estimate the real underlying probability. The press release presents one observation guaranteed to be as positive as possible, and the inevitable critical reply presents another observation guaranteed to be as negative as possible, so with those two in hand you can look at other observations and get a better final estimation.)

dymk 4y ago

Negative generic FUD

wefarrell 4y ago

Yup, this should be addressed with the same level of detail and transparency as a postmortem for a technical failure. What were the multiple points of failure that led to this decision and how are they altering their operations from preventing something like this from happening again? Without deep transparency they will lose trust.

nerdjon 4y ago

100% this. If this wasn’t Docker’s first time making a bad decision maybe I would think that this decision is on hold indefinitely. But it isn’t and they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. I will be continuing with my original plan of communicating ideally not using DockerHub internally and making every effort remove our reliance off of it.

burnished 4y ago

>After listening to feedback and consulting our community, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision in sunsetting our Free Team plan. Last week we felt our communications were terrible but our policy was sound. It’s now clear that both the communications and the policy were wrong, so we’re reversing course and no longer sunsetting the Free Team plan Seriously, what else do you want? This kind of pointless whinging is just noise. They flat out said they were wrong in the first place.

genmud 4y ago
I have already stated what I want, but I’ll spell it out 1) transparency into who was responsible for this decision 2) how exactly this decision was made and how they came to the conclusion that it was sound policy 3) how they are going to prevent these decisions that are disruptive, user-hostile and short sighted in the future 4) some degree of commitment they won’t sunset this in the future when people aren’t as upset