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If you don't like it, then why don't you use a different provider? If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? Sto

If you don't like it, then why don't you use a different provider? If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? Storage, compute, and traffic, isn't free. You've been the beneficiary of charity for years. Yes, the open source community has relied on this implicit charity as a parasite, by exploiting whatever free services they could. And now we're paying the price, as you say, by having DockerHub as the default provider. My suggestion is therefore that we need independent solutions, that are fully funded as a charity, and stop relying on freemium services from corporations that fundamentally don't care about the public good.

sealeck 2y ago
This is really a question of framing. The other way you can look at it is: Docker has benefitted from a community adopting its products, and developing software that makes Docker more useful. As someone who sells Docker services, you benefit from a greater market size. It's like how WordPress have benefitted from people authoring plugins – even though wordpress.org has hosted them for "free", this has been good commercial sense as it allows them to sell more WordPress.com to people.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  And once those services are fully developed, and the market is captured, do they still need to provide free services? Isn't compatibility issues a major problem for alternative registries?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > Isn't compatibility issues a major problem for alternative registries? Er, is it? I've used a handful of different registries and never hit anything that even resembled a compatibility problem. Have I just been lucky?
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      One example that springs to mind is Homebrew/MacPorts. I think they install things differently and might not be interoperable?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        They do things differently, but what does that have to do with docker registries?
        aspenmayer 2y ago
        It’s an example of incompatibility in registries generally, which I thought was the nature of your surprise at its existence or occurrence. I’m not aware of any such incompatibilities among Docker registries, but other issues may affect usage such as rate limits. I’m not sure what the person you were responding to had in mind.
    - pas 2y ago
      I had waaay too much problem with pushing to GCR, when pushing to a self-hosted GitLab's registry worked.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  "Docker has benefitted from a community adopting its products," It takes a whole lot of mental gymnastics to argue that a provider of free services is actually the one benefitting from that interaction, and not the other way around. Go ahead and build your systems on free dependencies like WordPress and Debian, but just get real and don't pretend that you are better than professionals that build business relationships and actually pay for their software dependencies like RHEL and Webflow.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    I mean, paying for your software dependencies doesn’t automatically make things any better.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      It's wild that "people should pay for software" is a controversial statement amongst software developers. If software developer, don't pay for the software you rely on. Then non technical users who appreciate software even less would pay for software with much less frequency and for much lower prices when they do! It is us as developers that need to first institutionalize the idea that software is paid, otherwise we have little hope to get paid for our efforts.
      - Joker_vD 2y ago
        There is difference between paying for software and paying for the development of software, you know.
        TZubiri 2y ago
        Yeah sure, but there's trickle down effects. What incentive would an employer have to hire you to build software, if they can't then go and sell the software that you built for profit.
        Joker_vD 2y ago
- kristianc 2y ago
  > It's like how WordPress have benefitted from people authoring plugins – even though wordpress.org has hosted them for "free", this has been good commercial sense as it allows them to sell more WordPress.com to people. With seemingly similar rent-seeking behaviour when Automattic decide they’ve had enough and want to put a toll on that road…
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- keybored 2y ago
  With your framing this looks like the free/“free” initial use of such a framing is similar to free accounts on new social media platforms. In that case the motivation is super clear: grow the social platform since a social platform with few users is useless. Then when they get big enough they start charging. Once you’re already locked in via all sorts of connections. Again in the case of social platforms: for the longest time this was framed as user entitlement if anyone didn’t like it. Which failed to see the other side. Yes, the users wanted something free but the company also got something back from the user. We could go back and forth on details like the service growing to such a point that the free service becomes too much of a burden on them. But consider the case when the free service was treated by the business as an investment for $X which was supposed to carry that cost until the proverbial rug could be pulled from the users without a mass exodus—grow your user base until you have enough of a mass to demand a considerable escape velocity in order to be avoided. Again, arguments could be made either way. But it is definitely not as simple-cut as an altruistic service versus selfish users/consumers. I’m sure someone versed in Economics could summarize the above in a phrase or a sentence.
thomasfedb 2y ago
Well, by their own amount of events they have and are - they’ve changed their default registry. If Docker advertises an open source program, it’s completely fair to be critical if they’re not delivering as advertised.
whois 2y ago
Your response feels in bad faith. Docker is the default registery. That gives them n amount of responsibility. Not to mention organizations should be accountable for their bad behavior. Don't give them a pass.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  Your position is one of presumed entitlement, where you rely on services being provided because the outcry of not doing it would be costly. So you're right in that sense. It's essentially blackmail: free services in exchange for staying silent. I think it's unhealthy. And I argue that we need properly funded, independent services, with clear motives.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> the open source community has relied on this implicit charity as a parasite Very loaded language you use, when, typically, commercial software relies on Open Source software and community efforts as a parasite.
- exe34 2y ago
  Projection allows one to set the frame of the debate, if you then accuse them of parasitism, it doesn't carry the same weight, as they've already used it against you.
  - plagiarist 2y ago
    These Docker "parasites" are providing dozens of free containers for Docker's customers and still have the audacity to request an email correspondence about their sponsorship status.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    Except I am not projecting anything, and I didn't accuse OP of being a parasite. I am just describing a factual state of things of how companies relate to Open Source Software.
noja 2y ago
Isn’t docker the one getting free stuff?
robertlagrant 2y ago
> My suggestion is therefore that we need independent solutions, that are fully funded as a charity, and stop relying on freemium services from corporations that fundamentally don't care about the public good. We had that already, but none of them invented Docker. > If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? They seem happy to pay; they were complaining (validly) about the process of renewing DSOS.
- 8organicbits 2y ago
  > none of them invented Docker I think that depends on what you mean by docker. Lots of similar things existed before, just less formalized and less centralized.
  - larntz 2y ago
    Which makes me wonder, would docker have gained traction if they didn't offer free registry services?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    But there's a reason why Docker was so successful - a single file that could define a deployment and tooling to build it into a runnable artefact was incredibly useful. From the future tech useful. If you can name these other similar solutions created by charities I can probably me more specific.
    - 8organicbits 2y ago
      I think of Docker as a well executed and well-timed formalization of existing tools. It put a name to a collection of engineering concepts. This is why people can build Docker in N lines of shell script. Jails existed in the late 90s. IaC had multiple options before Docker.
bayindirh 2y ago
You're framing this wrong. They don't whine because they didn't get DSOS status this year. They are confused because they didn't get an answer. They want communication, not free cookies.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  > we were preparing for our annual DSOS renewal. This process is abysmal, there's no way to apply to roll over membership, or even a renewal process per se, you have to reapply from scratch every year using the same badly-designed form ... It sounds more to me like those who run DockerHub aren't that interested in giving away free service.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    They (Docker) might not be. Docker Hub is their turf, they can do whatever they want (and face the consequences). However, the post doesn't say that LinuxServer want free service. They say that they had the opportunity, and they try every year. From what I read, they're perfectly fine with a "No, you are not selected this year". Being decent and being interested in giving a free service are mutually exclusive. You can provide free service while being mean, you can deny people from your free service while being polite. The people who wrote this post is only interested with the "polite" part. So, they can see what they're at and act accordingly (reapply, pay, or find other alternatives). Requesting communication is not a bad thing.
  - skywhopper 2y ago
    You’d think they’d at least try to sell to people who are asking for their services.
thespad 2y ago
We do use other providers, but as stated Docker Hub is the defacto standard so it would be counterproductive for us to abandon it entirely. We don't "want free stuff", we pay for docker hub for several accounts, but they offer and promote an Open Source program that we have been part of, that simply does not function properly, and that is our complaint. Your attitude of "well it's free so it's fine if it's shit, just go somewhere else" is wildly unhelpful to everyone.
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  I don't agree that you can speak on behalf of "everyone".
namaria 2y ago
Free resources are not charity and using them is not parasitic. Without the sharing ethos there would be no modern software. Those who can grasp the complexity of needing an ecosystem for modern technology to exist foster it and those who think strictly along the lines of profitability and short sighted morals are the unwitting beneficiaries of things they don't understand.
undecisive 2y ago
Here's a tiny bit of missing context. This blog is for LinuxServer.io, who build repositories that produce free docker images, for free, paid for by donations, for a bunch of open source software. By the looks of things, they are literally a charity. Conversely, their complaint is not "aren't docker rubbish? Let's mob 'em" - it's "heads up, something seems to be wrong and docker are not responding to anything, chances are there's trouble brewing - we're gonna start looking around and if you're depending on this, you should too" I would say calling "the open source community" a "parasite" because they're using free services from companies that have benefited greatly and earned a lot of money from things given freely by the open source community seems weird. Seems like a lot of people on here very concerned about those poor struggling corporations, and their exploitation by those evil open source charities. Feels like an evil political wind is blowing, wonder where that's coming from?
- concerndc1tizen 2y ago
  > If you're reading this and you work for Docker in some relevant capacity, give us a hint as to what we're supposed to do here, we'd really appreciate it. It sounds to me like their ultimate goal is to get more free stuff. And I'm saying: open source should not rely on benevolent corporations. And writing articles to beg for services is not a healthy strategy in the long term. Instead: use open standards, don't rely on centralized infrastructure, create a marketplace for providers, and create a better future. Stop maintaining the status quo of indentured servitude.
  - undecisive 2y ago
    I love how you intentionally cropped off the first two words of that sentence, try to make out that their 30 word side note was actually the whole point of the 800 word article, and you STILL didn't manage to make them sound as malicious as you wanted to. "give us a hint" - "Stop begging!" As I say, you're clearly coming into this with a strong unjustifiable bias, I can tell because you're forced to use words like "smear", "parasite", "exploiting", "beg", "indentured servitude" - it's a cover for the cognitive dissonance. But if you genuinely would like a discussion about the pitfalls of the funding models of open source, yeah it's a reasonable question that has never been satisfactorily answered. There are whole PHD projects on the subject, and nobody's cracked it. Giving money to open source projects is difficult for many reasons - ranging from tax treatment to geography even to legality. Providing services is somewhat easier, but in many companies in some countries even that comes with geopolitical legal issues. Marketplaces only work if you have something to barter, and if you would like to contribute to the freedoms you enjoyed, it's hard to make that work in a marketplace model, not to mention that even providing people the option of donating money for a product comes with overhead (legal / technological / service / financial network / server etc). If you would like a discussion about ensuring abstractions over the services you use, sure, I'm here for it. Of course, it's hampered by a lack of consistent interfaces, and in some cases interfaces that ensure they can never be smoothed over. But that sounds like a cool open source project - in this case, I guess it would be an anyhub kind of deal that can serve images for different use cases, paired with a DSL for defining a resource (that can generate a dockerfile / docker compose file, in docker's case). Of course, serving images isn't free, but you've cracked the problem of funding models of open source, right? Right? And you mention indentured servitude, loaded though that phrase is, it's also a poor analogy. Tax would be a closer match. You depend on open source and make money off it? Great. Giving open source a cut of that pie in some way seems the morally right thing to do. How you do that is up to you, but telling people they can use your service then pulling the rug while simultaneously ghosting them? That sounds kind. You know what, I think you're right - it's so much easier to lambast someone for daring trust or daring to express concern than it is to do anything meaningful to improve the landscape.
skywhopper 2y ago
Huh? If Docker wants to make money off folks like this, they ought to be attempting to sell to them. If they want to sunset the free services for open source thing, fine, but just ignoring it is completely broken behavior. They’re ignoring the contact methods they advertise when they should be using those as leads. It’s clear Docker is a dysfunctional business at this point.
ascendantlogic 2y ago
> If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? Docker literally offers free stuff if you follow their process. They followed the process and have gotten silence in return. Somehow that doesn't strike me as "smear them into giving you more free stuff". Don't say you're going to do a thing if you're not going to do the thing.
rad_gruchalski 2y ago
Nah, I am pissed off at them because they just raised their prices by 80%. If I didn’t look into my teams config, they’d charge me $900 for 5 seats (was the minimum number of seats), instead of $360 for two. They’re fucking predatory and as soon as something cheaper comes by, I’m cancelling my subscriptions with them.

sealeck 2y ago

This is really a question of framing. The other way you can look at it is: Docker has benefitted from a community adopting its products, and developing software that makes Docker more useful. As someone who sells Docker services, you benefit from a greater market size. It's like how WordPress have benefitted from people authoring plugins – even though wordpress.org has hosted them for "free", this has been good commercial sense as it allows them to sell more WordPress.com to people.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
And once those services are fully developed, and the market is captured, do they still need to provide free services? Isn't compatibility issues a major problem for alternative registries?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > Isn't compatibility issues a major problem for alternative registries? Er, is it? I've used a handful of different registries and never hit anything that even resembled a compatibility problem. Have I just been lucky?
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    One example that springs to mind is Homebrew/MacPorts. I think they install things differently and might not be interoperable?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      They do things differently, but what does that have to do with docker registries?
      - aspenmayer 2y ago
        It’s an example of incompatibility in registries generally, which I thought was the nature of your surprise at its existence or occurrence. I’m not aware of any such incompatibilities among Docker registries, but other issues may affect usage such as rate limits. I’m not sure what the person you were responding to had in mind.
  - pas 2y ago
    I had waaay too much problem with pushing to GCR, when pushing to a self-hosted GitLab's registry worked.
TZubiri 2y ago
"Docker has benefitted from a community adopting its products," It takes a whole lot of mental gymnastics to argue that a provider of free services is actually the one benefitting from that interaction, and not the other way around. Go ahead and build your systems on free dependencies like WordPress and Debian, but just get real and don't pretend that you are better than professionals that build business relationships and actually pay for their software dependencies like RHEL and Webflow.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  I mean, paying for your software dependencies doesn’t automatically make things any better.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    It's wild that "people should pay for software" is a controversial statement amongst software developers. If software developer, don't pay for the software you rely on. Then non technical users who appreciate software even less would pay for software with much less frequency and for much lower prices when they do! It is us as developers that need to first institutionalize the idea that software is paid, otherwise we have little hope to get paid for our efforts.
    - Joker_vD 2y ago
      There is difference between paying for software and paying for the development of software, you know.
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        Yeah sure, but there's trickle down effects. What incentive would an employer have to hire you to build software, if they can't then go and sell the software that you built for profit.
        Joker_vD 2y ago
kristianc 2y ago
> It's like how WordPress have benefitted from people authoring plugins – even though wordpress.org has hosted them for "free", this has been good commercial sense as it allows them to sell more WordPress.com to people. With seemingly similar rent-seeking behaviour when Automattic decide they’ve had enough and want to put a toll on that road…
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
keybored 2y ago
With your framing this looks like the free/“free” initial use of such a framing is similar to free accounts on new social media platforms. In that case the motivation is super clear: grow the social platform since a social platform with few users is useless. Then when they get big enough they start charging. Once you’re already locked in via all sorts of connections. Again in the case of social platforms: for the longest time this was framed as user entitlement if anyone didn’t like it. Which failed to see the other side. Yes, the users wanted something free but the company also got something back from the user. We could go back and forth on details like the service growing to such a point that the free service becomes too much of a burden on them. But consider the case when the free service was treated by the business as an investment for $X which was supposed to carry that cost until the proverbial rug could be pulled from the users without a mass exodus—grow your user base until you have enough of a mass to demand a considerable escape velocity in order to be avoided. Again, arguments could be made either way. But it is definitely not as simple-cut as an altruistic service versus selfish users/consumers. I’m sure someone versed in Economics could summarize the above in a phrase or a sentence.

thomasfedb 2y ago

Well, by their own amount of events they have and are - they’ve changed their default registry. If Docker advertises an open source program, it’s completely fair to be critical if they’re not delivering as advertised.

whois 2y ago

Your response feels in bad faith. Docker is the default registery. That gives them n amount of responsibility. Not to mention organizations should be accountable for their bad behavior. Don't give them a pass.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
Your position is one of presumed entitlement, where you rely on services being provided because the outcry of not doing it would be costly. So you're right in that sense. It's essentially blackmail: free services in exchange for staying silent. I think it's unhealthy. And I argue that we need properly funded, independent services, with clear motives.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> the open source community has relied on this implicit charity as a parasite Very loaded language you use, when, typically, commercial software relies on Open Source software and community efforts as a parasite.

exe34 2y ago
Projection allows one to set the frame of the debate, if you then accuse them of parasitism, it doesn't carry the same weight, as they've already used it against you.
- plagiarist 2y ago
  These Docker "parasites" are providing dozens of free containers for Docker's customers and still have the audacity to request an email correspondence about their sponsorship status.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  Except I am not projecting anything, and I didn't accuse OP of being a parasite. I am just describing a factual state of things of how companies relate to Open Source Software.

noja 2y ago

Isn’t docker the one getting free stuff?

robertlagrant 2y ago

> My suggestion is therefore that we need independent solutions, that are fully funded as a charity, and stop relying on freemium services from corporations that fundamentally don't care about the public good. We had that already, but none of them invented Docker. > If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? They seem happy to pay; they were complaining (validly) about the process of renewing DSOS.

8organicbits 2y ago
> none of them invented Docker I think that depends on what you mean by docker. Lots of similar things existed before, just less formalized and less centralized.
- larntz 2y ago
  Which makes me wonder, would docker have gained traction if they didn't offer free registry services?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  But there's a reason why Docker was so successful - a single file that could define a deployment and tooling to build it into a runnable artefact was incredibly useful. From the future tech useful. If you can name these other similar solutions created by charities I can probably me more specific.
  - 8organicbits 2y ago
    I think of Docker as a well executed and well-timed formalization of existing tools. It put a name to a collection of engineering concepts. This is why people can build Docker in N lines of shell script. Jails existed in the late 90s. IaC had multiple options before Docker.

bayindirh 2y ago

You're framing this wrong. They don't whine because they didn't get DSOS status this year. They are confused because they didn't get an answer. They want communication, not free cookies.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
> we were preparing for our annual DSOS renewal. This process is abysmal, there's no way to apply to roll over membership, or even a renewal process per se, you have to reapply from scratch every year using the same badly-designed form ... It sounds more to me like those who run DockerHub aren't that interested in giving away free service.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  They (Docker) might not be. Docker Hub is their turf, they can do whatever they want (and face the consequences). However, the post doesn't say that LinuxServer want free service. They say that they had the opportunity, and they try every year. From what I read, they're perfectly fine with a "No, you are not selected this year". Being decent and being interested in giving a free service are mutually exclusive. You can provide free service while being mean, you can deny people from your free service while being polite. The people who wrote this post is only interested with the "polite" part. So, they can see what they're at and act accordingly (reapply, pay, or find other alternatives). Requesting communication is not a bad thing.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  You’d think they’d at least try to sell to people who are asking for their services.

thespad 2y ago

We do use other providers, but as stated Docker Hub is the defacto standard so it would be counterproductive for us to abandon it entirely. We don't "want free stuff", we pay for docker hub for several accounts, but they offer and promote an Open Source program that we have been part of, that simply does not function properly, and that is our complaint. Your attitude of "well it's free so it's fine if it's shit, just go somewhere else" is wildly unhelpful to everyone.

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
I don't agree that you can speak on behalf of "everyone".

namaria 2y ago

Free resources are not charity and using them is not parasitic. Without the sharing ethos there would be no modern software. Those who can grasp the complexity of needing an ecosystem for modern technology to exist foster it and those who think strictly along the lines of profitability and short sighted morals are the unwitting beneficiaries of things they don't understand.

undecisive 2y ago

Here's a tiny bit of missing context. This blog is for LinuxServer.io, who build repositories that produce free docker images, for free, paid for by donations, for a bunch of open source software. By the looks of things, they are literally a charity. Conversely, their complaint is not "aren't docker rubbish? Let's mob 'em" - it's "heads up, something seems to be wrong and docker are not responding to anything, chances are there's trouble brewing - we're gonna start looking around and if you're depending on this, you should too" I would say calling "the open source community" a "parasite" because they're using free services from companies that have benefited greatly and earned a lot of money from things given freely by the open source community seems weird. Seems like a lot of people on here very concerned about those poor struggling corporations, and their exploitation by those evil open source charities. Feels like an evil political wind is blowing, wonder where that's coming from?

concerndc1tizen 2y ago
> If you're reading this and you work for Docker in some relevant capacity, give us a hint as to what we're supposed to do here, we'd really appreciate it. It sounds to me like their ultimate goal is to get more free stuff. And I'm saying: open source should not rely on benevolent corporations. And writing articles to beg for services is not a healthy strategy in the long term. Instead: use open standards, don't rely on centralized infrastructure, create a marketplace for providers, and create a better future. Stop maintaining the status quo of indentured servitude.
- undecisive 2y ago
  I love how you intentionally cropped off the first two words of that sentence, try to make out that their 30 word side note was actually the whole point of the 800 word article, and you STILL didn't manage to make them sound as malicious as you wanted to. "give us a hint" - "Stop begging!" As I say, you're clearly coming into this with a strong unjustifiable bias, I can tell because you're forced to use words like "smear", "parasite", "exploiting", "beg", "indentured servitude" - it's a cover for the cognitive dissonance. But if you genuinely would like a discussion about the pitfalls of the funding models of open source, yeah it's a reasonable question that has never been satisfactorily answered. There are whole PHD projects on the subject, and nobody's cracked it. Giving money to open source projects is difficult for many reasons - ranging from tax treatment to geography even to legality. Providing services is somewhat easier, but in many companies in some countries even that comes with geopolitical legal issues. Marketplaces only work if you have something to barter, and if you would like to contribute to the freedoms you enjoyed, it's hard to make that work in a marketplace model, not to mention that even providing people the option of donating money for a product comes with overhead (legal / technological / service / financial network / server etc). If you would like a discussion about ensuring abstractions over the services you use, sure, I'm here for it. Of course, it's hampered by a lack of consistent interfaces, and in some cases interfaces that ensure they can never be smoothed over. But that sounds like a cool open source project - in this case, I guess it would be an anyhub kind of deal that can serve images for different use cases, paired with a DSL for defining a resource (that can generate a dockerfile / docker compose file, in docker's case). Of course, serving images isn't free, but you've cracked the problem of funding models of open source, right? Right? And you mention indentured servitude, loaded though that phrase is, it's also a poor analogy. Tax would be a closer match. You depend on open source and make money off it? Great. Giving open source a cut of that pie in some way seems the morally right thing to do. How you do that is up to you, but telling people they can use your service then pulling the rug while simultaneously ghosting them? That sounds kind. You know what, I think you're right - it's so much easier to lambast someone for daring trust or daring to express concern than it is to do anything meaningful to improve the landscape.

skywhopper 2y ago

Huh? If Docker wants to make money off folks like this, they ought to be attempting to sell to them. If they want to sunset the free services for open source thing, fine, but just ignoring it is completely broken behavior. They’re ignoring the contact methods they advertise when they should be using those as leads. It’s clear Docker is a dysfunctional business at this point.

ascendantlogic 2y ago

> If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff? Docker literally offers free stuff if you follow their process. They followed the process and have gotten silence in return. Somehow that doesn't strike me as "smear them into giving you more free stuff". Don't say you're going to do a thing if you're not going to do the thing.

rad_gruchalski 2y ago

Nah, I am pissed off at them because they just raised their prices by 80%. If I didn’t look into my teams config, they’d charge me $900 for 5 seats (was the minimum number of seats), instead of $360 for two. They’re fucking predatory and as soon as something cheaper comes by, I’m cancelling my subscriptions with them.