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> On the plus side, any company I work for doesn't have to worry about licences. Win win! Was this a deal breaker for any company? I ask because the Docker De

• smokel 1y ago
  Reading through the comments here, it looks like there is an opportunity for a startup to streamline software licensing. Just a free tip.
  • eehoo 1y ago
    There are already software licensing providers such as 10Duke that do exactly that. Pretty much all of the licensing related problems mentioned here would either disappear or at the very least get dramatically simpler if more companies used 10Duke Enterprise as their licensing solution to issue and manage licenses. There is a better way, but sadly most businesses overlook licensing. (the company I work for uses them, our licensing used to be a mess similar to what's described here)
  • adolph 1y ago
    Yeah, at a big enterprise the larger challenge ahead of even payment is the legal arrangements. They typically sign some "master license" agreement with an aggregator like CDW. Those places don't seem well set up for software redistribution though. Setting up a Steam or AppStore clone for various utility-ware would go a long way to enabling people to access the software an enterprise doesn't mind paying for if the legal and financial stuff wasn't applying friction.
• pmontra 1y ago
  I think that I never saw somebody using Docker Desktop. I saw running containers with the command line everywhere, but I maybe I did not notice. No licenses for the command line tools, right?
  • akerl_ 1y ago
    On a Mac or Windows machine, you generally need something to get you a Linux environment on which to run the containers. You can run your own VM via any number of tools, or you can use WSL now on Windows, etc etc. But Docker Desktop was one of the first push-button ways to say "I have a Mac and I want to run Docker containers and I don't want to have to moonlight as a VM gardener to do it.
  • chuckadams 1y ago
    The command-line tools on a Mac usually come from Docker Desktop. The homebrew version of docker is bare-bones and requires the virtualbox-based docker-machine package, whereas Desktop is using Apple's Virtualization Framework. Nobody runs the homebrew version as far as I can tell. On Windows, you can use the docker that's built in to the default WSL2 image (ubuntu), and Docker Desktop will use it if available, otherwise it uses its own backend (probably also Hyper-V based). I use Orbstack myself, but that's also a paid product.
  • throwaway0236 1y ago
    I sometimes use Docker Desktop on my Mac to view logs. It's more convenient.
• ejoso 1y ago
  This math sounds really simple until you work for a company that is “profitable” yet constantly turning over every sofa cushion for spare change. Whuch describes most publicly traded companies. It can be quite difficult to get this kind of money for such a nominal tool that has a lot of free competition. Docker was very critical a few years ago, but “why not use podman or containerd or…” makes it harder to stand up for.
• csours 1y ago
  Companies aren't monoliths, they're made of teams. Big companies are made of teams of teams. The little teams don't really get to make purchasing decisions. If there's a free alternative, little teams just have to suck it up and try to make it work. --- Also consider that many of these expenses are born by the 'cost center' side of the house, that is, the people who don't make money for the company. If you work in a cost center, the name of the game is saving money by cutting expenses. If technology goes into the actual product, the cost for that is accounted for differently.
  • citizenpaul 1y ago
    It always amazes me how hostile most large companies are to paying for developer tools that have a trivial cost. Then they will approve the budget for some yay quartly profit party no one cares about that cost $100k for the venue rental alone. I do understand that this mostly is because management wants staff to be replaceable and disposable having specialty tools suggests that a person can be unique.
    • flyinglizard 1y ago
      No, it's not because of that. It's because: 1. You want to control spend - there are budgets. 2. You want to control accounting - minimize the number of vendors you work with. Each billing needs to come with an invoice, these need to be managed, when a developer leaves you need to cancel their seat etc. It's a pain. 3. You want to control compliance - are these tools safe? Are they accessing sensitive data? Are they audited? 4. You want to control interoperability between teams. Can't have it become a zoo of bring-your-own stuff. So free tools get around all of these, you can just wing it under the radar and if the tool becomes prominent enough then you go fight the war to have it adopted. Once there's spend, you need to get into line. And that line makes a lot of sense when you're into 30 developers, let alone hundreds.
      • strken 1y ago
        If you've got 30 developers then you've probably got, what, five or six teams? Your tech leads/senior engineers/whoever provides tech leadership at a team level are operating at a scale where they can go to the pub with your head of engineering/CTO/each other/the dude from finance who has a credit card and fit around a table. I've worked at companies that size and the "war" involved putting time in the calendar of the head of engineering, asking how his son was, demoing the product we wanted for about two minutes and explaining the pain point it solved, then promising to get our legal team and the one security person to review it after he put the credit card in and before we used it in prod. When I worked somewhere larger it was much more difficult.
• lucyjojo 1y ago
  for reference a jp dev will be paid around $50,000. most of the world will probably be in the 10k-50k range except a few places (switzerland, luxembourg, usa?). atlassian and google and okta and ghe and this and that (claude code?). that eventually starts to stack up.
  • throwaway0236 1y ago
    I think you are underestimating the salaries in other "developed" countries, but you are right that US salaries are much higher than any other country (especially in Silicon Valley) You have a valid point in that many HN commentators seem to live in a bubble where spending thousands of dollars on a developer for "convenience" is seen as a no-brainer. They often work in companies that don't make a profit, but are funded by huge VC investments. I don't blame them, as it is a valid choice given the circumstances. If you have the money, why not? But they may start thinking differently if the flow of VC money slows down. It's similar to how some wealthy people buy a private jet. Their time is valuable, and the cost seems justified (at least if you don’t care about the environmental impact). I believe that frugality is actually the default mode of business, but many companies in SV are protected from the consequences by the VCs.
• bongodongobob 1y ago
  I work for a $2 billion/yr company and we need three levels of approval for a Visio license. I've never been at a large corp where you could just order shit like that. You'll have to fill out forms , have a few meetings about it, business justification spreadsheets etc, then get told it's not in the budget.
• smileysteve 1y ago
  To bring up AI, and the eventual un-subsidizing of costs; if $9 a year is too much for docker... Then even the $20/mo (June) price tag is too high for AI, much less $200 (August), or $2000? (post subsidizing)
• orochimaaru 1y ago
  If your enterprise with a large engineering team that isn’t a software company, you are a cost center. So anything related to developer tools is rarely funded. It will mostly be - use the free stuff and suck it up. Either that or you have a massive process to acquire said licenses with multiple reporting requirements. So, you manager doesn’t need the headache and says just use the free stuff and move on. I used to use docker. I use podman now. Are there teams in my enterprise who have docker licenses - maybe. But tracking them down and dealing with the process of adding myself to that “list” isn’t worth the trouble.
• codesmash 1y ago
  The problem is not the cost. It's complexity. From a buyer perspective literally fighting with the procurement team is a nightmare. And usually the need is coming from someone below C-level. So you have to: convince your manager and his manager convince procurement team it has to be in a budget (and usually it's much easier to convince to pay for the dinner) than you have a procurement team than you need to go through vendor review process (or at least chase execution) This is reality in all big companies that this rule applies to. It's at least a quarter project. Once I tried to buy a $5k/yr software license. The Sidekiq founder told me (after two months of back and forth) that he's done and I have to pay by CC (which I didn't had as miserable team lead).
• tecleandor 1y ago
  I've seen a weird thing on their service agreement: Use Restrictions. Customer and its Users may not and may not allow any third party to: [...] 10. Access the Service for the purpose of developing or operating products or services intended to be offered to third parties in competition with the Services[...] Emphasis mine on 'operating'. So I cannot use Docker Desktop to operate, for example: ECR, GCR or Harbor?
  • chuckadams 1y ago
    I think the Service in question is services like Docker Hub that they don't let you use as the infrastructure for your competing site.
• troyvit 1y ago
  > I ask because the Docker Desktop paid license requirement is quite reasonable. If you have less than 250 employees and make less than $10 million in annual revenue it's free. It is for now, but I can't think of a player as large as Docker that hasn't pulled the rug out from under deals like this. And for good reason, that deal is probably a loss leader and if they want to continue they need to convert those free customers into paying.
• arunc 1y ago
  $90 is also like 1.5 hours of work that I would've spent debugging podman anyway. And I've spent more than a few hours every time podman breaks, it to be honest.
• DerArzt 1y ago
  I work at a fortune 250 and cost of the licence was the given reason for moving to podman for the whole org.
• taormina 1y ago
  Yep! What startup has the goal of making less than $10 million in annual revenue? That sentence was absolutely a deal breaker for the CEO and CTO of our last company. And since when has Docker Desktop "just worked"?
  • nickjj 1y ago
    I've been using Docker since before Docker Desktop. Never really had any major problems with Docker Desktop on Windows. I run it and it allows me to run containers through WSL 2. Volume performance is near native Linux speeds and the software itself doesn't crash, even on my 10 year old machine. I also use it on macOS on a work laptop for a lot of different projects and it works. There's more issues around volume mount performance here but it's not something that's unusably slow. Also given the volume performance is mostly due to OS level file system things I'm skeptical Podman would resolve that. I remember trying Colima for something and it made no difference there.
• patmcc 1y ago
  It's not the cost, it's the headache. Do I need to worry about setting up SSO, do I need to work with procurement, do I need to do something in our SOC2 audit, do I need to get it approved as an allowed tool, etc. Whether it's $100/year or $10k/year it's all the same headache. Yes, this is dumb, but it's how the process works at a lot of companies. Whereas if it's a free tool that just magically goes away. Yes, this is also dumb.
• bastardoperator 1y ago
  Docker has persuaded several big shops to purchase site licenses.
• jandrese 1y ago
  > Was this a deal breaker for any company? It's not the money, it's the bureaucracy. You can't just buy software, you need a justification, a review board meeting, marketplace survey with explanations of why this particular vendor was chosen over others with similar products, sign off from the management chain, yearly re-reviews for the support contract, etc... And then you need to work with the vendor to do whatever licensing hoops they need to do to make the software work in an offline environment that will never see the Internet, something that more often than not blows the minds of smaller vendors these days. Half the time they only think in the cloud and situations like this seem like they come from Mars. The actual cost of the product is almost nothing compared to the cost of justifying its purchase. It can be cheaper to hire a full time engineer to maintain the open source solutions just to avoid these headaches. But then of course you get pushback from someone in management that goes "we want a support contract and a paid vendor because that's best practices". You just can't win sometimes.
• zer00eyz 1y ago
  > you'd end up paying $9 a year per developer for the license It's only 9 bucks a year, its only 5 bucks a month, its less than a dollar a day. Docker, ide, ticking system, GitHub, jira, sales force, email, office suit, Figma.... all of a sudden your spending 1000 bucks a month per staff member for a small 10 person office. Meanwhile AWS is charging you .01xxxx for bandwidth, disk space, cpu time, s3 buckets, databases. All so tiencent based AI clients from China hammer your hardware and run up your bill.... The rent seeking has gotten out of hand.
  • j45 1y ago
    The loaded cost is truly something else, and most understood by people who had to find a way to pay for it all, or paid for it all for others. The majority of businesses in the world, (and the majority of jobs) are created and delivered by small business, not big. And then the issues when a service goes down it takes everyone else down with it.
• maxprimer 1y ago
  Even large companies with thousands of developers have budgets to manage and often times when the CT/IO sees free as an option that's all that matters.
• m463 1y ago
  I hated the docker desktop telemetry. I remember it happened in the macos installer even before you got any dialog box
• tclancy 1y ago
  Yes. I worked for a company with a few thousand developers and we swapped away from Docker one week with almost no warning. It was a memorable experience.
• papageek 1y ago
  You need a compliance department and attorneys to look over licenses and agreements. It's a real hassle and not really related to cost of the license itself.
• wiether 1y ago
  > If you have a dev team of 10 people and are extremely profitable to where you need licenses you'd end up paying $9 a year per developer for the license. It doesn't quite change your argument, but where have you seen $9/year/dev? The only way I see a $9 figure is the $9/month for Docker Pro with a yearly sub, so it's 12*$9=$108/year/dev or $1080/year for your 10 devs team. Also it should be noted that Docker Pro is intended for individual professionals, so you don't have collaboration features on private repos and you have to manage each licence individually, which, even for only 10 licences, implies a big overhead. If you want to work as a team you need to take the Docker Team licence, at $15/month/dev on a yearly sub, so now you are at $1800/year for your 10 devs team. Twenty times more than your initial figure of $90/year. Still, $1800 is not that much in the grand scheme of things, but then you still have to add a usual Atlassian sub, an Office365/GWorkspace sub, an AI sub... You can end-up paying +$200/month/dev just in software licences, without counting the overhead of managing them.
  • nickjj 1y ago
    I can't speak for all companies but a few I've dealt with bought licenses exclusively for Docker Desktop access. They're not using private repos since they were invested in private registries through their cloud provider.
• secondcoming 1y ago
  Yes. Our company no longer allows use of Docker Desktop
• phaedrix 1y ago
  You are off by a factor of 12. It's $9 per month not year.
  • nickjj 1y ago
    Thanks, I can't believe I missed that! $90 vs $1,080 would be the difference anually.
• racecar789 1y ago
  > you'd end up paying $9 a year per developer for the license Correction: Docker Desktop is $9/month (not $9/year).
• firesteelrain 1y ago
  We only run Podman Desktop if ever because for large companies it is cost prohibitive. We also found that most people don’t need *Desktop at all. Command line works fine
• akerl_ 1y ago
  The problem isn’t generally the cost, it’s the complexity. You end up having to track who has it installed. Hired 5 more people this week? How many of them will want docker desktop? Oh, we’ve maxed the licenses we bought? Time to re-open the procurement process and amend the purchase order.
  • weberc2 1y ago
    I'm of the opinion that large companies should be paying for the software they use regardless of whether it's open source or not, because software isn't free to develop. So assuming you're paying for the software you use, you still have the problem that you are subject to your internal procurement processes. If your internal procurement processes make it really painful to add a new seat, then maybe the processes need to be reformed. Open source only "fixes" the problem insofar as there's no enforcement mechanism, so it makes it really easy for companies to stiff the open source contributors.
    • rlpb 1y ago
      > so it makes it really easy for companies to stiff the open source contributors I don't think there's any stiffing going on, since the open source contributors knowingly contributed with a license that specifically says that payment isn't required. It is not reasonable for them to take the benefits of doing that but then expect payment anyway.
    • bityard 1y ago
      "stiff the open source contributors" I'm not sure you realize that "open source" means anyone anywhere is free to use, modify, and redistribute the software in any way they see fit? Maybe you're thinking of freeware or shareware which often _do_ come with exceptions for commercial use? But anyway, as an open source contributor, I have never felt I was being "stiffed" just because a company uses some software that I helped write or improve. I contribute back to projects because I find them useful and want to fix the problems that I run into so I don't have to maintain my own local patches, help others avoid the same problems, and because making the software better is how I give back to the open source community.
• xyzzy_plugh 1y ago
  It's a deal breaker because it was previously free to use, and frankly it's not worth $1 a month given there are better paid alternatives, let alone better free alternatives.
• flerchin 1y ago
  "officially supported" is not a value. It's not the price, it's that there is one. 1 penny would be too much because it prevents compose-ability of dev workstations.
• t43562 1y ago
  I don't particularly care if it's worth it or not. I don't need to do it. Getting money for things is not easy in all companies.
• fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
  At my job going through procurement for something like Docker Desktop when there are free alternatives is not worth it. It takes forever, so long that I'll forget that I asked for something. Then later when they do get around to it, they'll take up more of my time than it's worth on documentation, meetings, and other bullshit (well to me it's bullshit, I'm sure they have their reasons). Then when they are finally convinced that yes a Webstorm license is acceptable, they'll spend another inordinate amount of time trying to negotiate some deal with Jetbrains. Meanwhile I gave up 6 months ago and have been paying the $5 a month myself.
• dice 1y ago
  > Was this a deal breaker for any company? It is at the company I currently work for. We moved to Rancher Desktop or Podman (individual choice, both are Apache licensed) and blocked Docker Desktop on IT's device management software. Much easier than going through finance and trying to keep up with licenses.
  • regularfry 1y ago
    Deal breaker for us too, now in my second org where that's been true. It's not just that you need a licence now, it's that even if we took it to procurement, until it actually got done we'd be at risk of them turning up with a list of IP addresses and saying "are you going to pay for all of these installs, then?". It's just a stupid position to get into. The Docker of today might not have a record of doing that, but I wouldn't rule out them getting bought by someone like Oracle who absolutely, definitely would.
    • SushiMon 1y ago
      Were there any missing/worse functional capabilities that drove you over to Podman/alternatives? Or just the licensing / pricing?
      • regularfry 1y ago
        No, it was entirely a business decision in both cases.
• debarshri 1y ago
  You can always negotiate the price
  • johannes1234321 1y ago
    In other words: you can always make the buying process more complex and expensive. For some products that might be worth it. For other not. But whatever the outcome: you still got to track license compliance afterwards and renew licenses. (Which also works better when tracking internal usage as you know your need)
• k4rli 1y ago
  Docker Desktop is also (imo) useless and helps be ignorant. Most Mac users I see using it struggle to see the difference between "image" and "container". Complete lack of understanding. All the same stuff can easily be done from cli.
  • j45 1y ago
    Not everyone uses software the same way. Not everyone becomes a beginner to using software the same way or the one way we see.
  • radlad 1y ago
    I don't believe it's possible to run Docker on macOS without Docker Desktop (at least not without something like lima.) AFAIUI, Docker Desktop contains not just the GUI, but also the hypervisor layer. Is my understanding mistaken?
    • cduzz 1y ago
      It's pretty easy to run docker on macos -- colima[1] is just a brew command away... It runs qemu under the hood if you want to run x86 (or sparc or mips!) instead of arm on a newer mac. [1]https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/colima https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/colima
      • lmm 1y ago
        > colima[1] is just a brew command away... Which would be great if it worked reliably, or had any documentation at all for when it breaks. But it doesn't and it doesn't.
        • cduzz 1y ago
          First, I guess I'll just invoke Sturgeon's law[1] -- almost all software, especially if you don't really understand it, is crap, and probably the software you understand is also crap, you're just used to it. Good software is pretty tricky to make. But second -- I use colima lots, on my home macs and my work macs, and it mostly just works. The profiles stuff is kinda annoying and I find myself accidentally running arm when I want x86, or other tedious config issues crop up. But it actually has been easier to live with than docker desktop where I'd run out of space and things would fall apart. Docker on MacOS is broadly going work poorly relative to it on linux, just from having to run the docker stuff in a linux vm that's hiding somewhere behind the scenes. If you find too much friction with any of these, probably it's easier to just run a linux vm on the mac and interact with docker in the 'native' environment. I've found UTM to be quite a bit easier to live with than virtualbox. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law