6 ms·

Hi, I'm the founder of dotCloud and author of Docker. Projects like Flynn are the reason we opened Docker in the first place. They are a good thing for the dock

by shykes 13y ago

Hi, I'm the founder of dotCloud and author of Docker. Projects like Flynn are the reason we opened Docker in the first place. They are a good thing for the docker ecosystem, and they are definitely good for dotCloud. The dirty little secret of PaaS is that there is not, and will never be a single PaaS that fits everyone's needs. With docker we offer a foundation for many PaaSes to engage in a healthy competition while preserving interoperability. So Shopify will always be free to mix and match Flynn's lego bricks with the bricks of other offerings - because they are all Docker-compatible. The authors of Flynn get that, which is why I believe their product will be good and I will be personally sponsoring it :)

oellegaard 13y ago
You have my deepest respect! I wish more people would think the same way.
mwcampbell 13y ago
Are you not concerned that once Flynn gets good enough, lots of companies will take a little time to get Flynn set up on VPSes or dedicated servers, rather than pay the high premium for dotCloud?
- danielsiders 13y ago
  Flynn is particularly appealing to companies that need to completely control their own infrastructure. In the same sense that git being open source helps, not hurts github, I think there's limited crossover between the users of Flynn and DotCloud customers.
  - druiid 13y ago
    Not sure I completely agree with this. I don't know what your internal discussions were, but at least one of your competitors has an 'enterprise' option in which they give you your own version of the toolkit. Sadly among this was that they stopped with their open-source contributions to the Cloud Foundry community (Their last update appears to have been over two years ago https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/105 https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/105). I'm not complaining that an alternative to Cloud Foundry is going to exist, but I'm still a bit surprised.
    - sciurus 13y ago
      Selling an on-premise "Enterprise PaaS" is one of the ways Red Hat is monetizing OpenShift. https://www.openshift.com/products/enterprise https://www.openshift.com/products/enterprise
      - druiid 13y ago
        Indeed and Cloud Foundry has 'enterprise' forks as well (Stackato: http://www.activestate.com/stackato/compare-with-cloud-foundry http://www.activestate.com/stackato/compare-with-cloud-found...). Essentially I think there's a huge market here and all I see for DotCloud from this announcement is at least some potential scavenging of their core users.
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    Who in their right mind would pay $0.288 per hour (a little over $200 per month) to dotCloud for roughly the equivalent of an EC2 small instance, when with just a little extra time spent up front, they'll be able to fire up an AMI of Flynn and pay less than a quarter as much per month?
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Who in their right mind would pay $0.288 per hour (a little over $200 per month) to dotCloud for roughly the equivalent of an EC2 small instance, when with just a little extra time spent up front, they'll be able to fire up an AMI of Flynn and pay less than a quarter as much per month? People who value a little extra effort at startup as being a cost that is more than $200/month over the life of their use of dotCloud. There's a lot of cases where that could be true, especially if the extra effort and moving to a different platform is deferred, rather than permanent. There are many times where doing something now (that isn't necessary for immediate goals, but is useful for long-term savings) has greater opportunity costs than doing it later. (Lots of times when the reverse is true, as well.)
    - benologist 13y ago
      You're asking who would pay more for dotCloud vs. DIY on Amazon who themselves have a huge markup on their servers against traditional hosting?
      - mwcampbell 13y ago
        I compared to EC2 primarily because it also has hourly pricing. If I compared to DigitalOcean instead, then DotCloud would look even worse -- about 10x more expensive.
        benologist 13y ago
        Correct. So who would pay for x when y? Everyone who wants x, not y.
    - darkarmani 13y ago
  - kibibu 13y ago
    I think this is a false analogy. GitHub did not create Git, nor is their code open source.
chatmasta 13y ago
So what is the strategic business advantage? Is it that Docker (presumably, your core piece of infrastructure) improves as a product as more PaaS's adopt it? So essentially your competition will improve your own infrastructure. Much respect for DotCloud's success thusfar btw.
- zimbatm 13y ago
  Not from dotCloud but I've noticed that there is a focus for a central index. It might be possible for them to get revenue from an app-store. There is also the usual consulting that can be derived from expertise.
wildmXranat 13y ago
I got a very good vibe from you guys after watching the pycon 2013 presentation and have tracked docker development since then. Considering your comment, I have to say that not only will I support dotcloud etc., but I will also look to give back in whatever way I can to boost the ecosystem.

by shykes 13y ago

oellegaard 13y ago

You have my deepest respect! I wish more people would think the same way.

mwcampbell 13y ago

Are you not concerned that once Flynn gets good enough, lots of companies will take a little time to get Flynn set up on VPSes or dedicated servers, rather than pay the high premium for dotCloud?

danielsiders 13y ago
Flynn is particularly appealing to companies that need to completely control their own infrastructure. In the same sense that git being open source helps, not hurts github, I think there's limited crossover between the users of Flynn and DotCloud customers.
- druiid 13y ago
  Not sure I completely agree with this. I don't know what your internal discussions were, but at least one of your competitors has an 'enterprise' option in which they give you your own version of the toolkit. Sadly among this was that they stopped with their open-source contributions to the Cloud Foundry community (Their last update appears to have been over two years ago https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/105 https://github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/pull/105). I'm not complaining that an alternative to Cloud Foundry is going to exist, but I'm still a bit surprised.
  - sciurus 13y ago
    Selling an on-premise "Enterprise PaaS" is one of the ways Red Hat is monetizing OpenShift. https://www.openshift.com/products/enterprise https://www.openshift.com/products/enterprise
    - druiid 13y ago
      Indeed and Cloud Foundry has 'enterprise' forks as well (Stackato: http://www.activestate.com/stackato/compare-with-cloud-foundry http://www.activestate.com/stackato/compare-with-cloud-found...). Essentially I think there's a huge market here and all I see for DotCloud from this announcement is at least some potential scavenging of their core users.
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  Who in their right mind would pay $0.288 per hour (a little over $200 per month) to dotCloud for roughly the equivalent of an EC2 small instance, when with just a little extra time spent up front, they'll be able to fire up an AMI of Flynn and pay less than a quarter as much per month?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Who in their right mind would pay $0.288 per hour (a little over $200 per month) to dotCloud for roughly the equivalent of an EC2 small instance, when with just a little extra time spent up front, they'll be able to fire up an AMI of Flynn and pay less than a quarter as much per month? People who value a little extra effort at startup as being a cost that is more than $200/month over the life of their use of dotCloud. There's a lot of cases where that could be true, especially if the extra effort and moving to a different platform is deferred, rather than permanent. There are many times where doing something now (that isn't necessary for immediate goals, but is useful for long-term savings) has greater opportunity costs than doing it later. (Lots of times when the reverse is true, as well.)
  - benologist 13y ago
    You're asking who would pay more for dotCloud vs. DIY on Amazon who themselves have a huge markup on their servers against traditional hosting?
    - mwcampbell 13y ago
      I compared to EC2 primarily because it also has hourly pricing. If I compared to DigitalOcean instead, then DotCloud would look even worse -- about 10x more expensive.
      - benologist 13y ago
        Correct. So who would pay for x when y? Everyone who wants x, not y.
  - darkarmani 13y ago
- kibibu 13y ago
  I think this is a false analogy. GitHub did not create Git, nor is their code open source.

chatmasta 13y ago

So what is the strategic business advantage? Is it that Docker (presumably, your core piece of infrastructure) improves as a product as more PaaS's adopt it? So essentially your competition will improve your own infrastructure. Much respect for DotCloud's success thusfar btw.

zimbatm 13y ago
Not from dotCloud but I've noticed that there is a focus for a central index. It might be possible for them to get revenue from an app-store. There is also the usual consulting that can be derived from expertise.

wildmXranat 13y ago

I got a very good vibe from you guys after watching the pycon 2013 presentation and have tracked docker development since then. Considering your comment, I have to say that not only will I support dotcloud etc., but I will also look to give back in whatever way I can to boost the ecosystem.