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Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

theregister.com

221–230 of 597 posts

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#221

So many people in this thread don’t understand how enterprise decisions get made. The business license costs $21/month, probably less in reality. Do you really think that businesses are going to jeopardize the workflows of their $250k/year assets over a very core piece of software for $250/year? Any alternative has switching costs and risks. Companies will just pay this. I see so many people saying “just do these 10…

I think you're correct about existing users at large corporations. Converting all those into paid accounts is a no-brainer.

However, this will have a massive change on the competitive landscape. For companies that haven't yet adopted Docker, this is a huge red checkmark. This change is going to spur development on open source alternatives like nothing else could.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#222
post #152

We use Docker Desktop for the Mac at work. (Large company) Docker for Mac absolutely sucks. If they’re going to force everyone to pay they better start fixing bugs. They recently stopped allowing skipping a release unless you pay, and then promptly shipped a point release with a showstopper bug. I literally asked IT for a Linux VM/Cloud machine yesterday for development because my Mac is dead in the water due to a bu…

>They recently stopped allowing skipping a release unless you pay, and then promptly shipped a point release with a showstopper bug. Whoa, really? Is this written up somewhere? My first "WTF" with docker was in Fall 2015 when we dockerized our app and had it nicely set up so we could tell employees "run this command and the app Just Works" ... and then they introduced a breaking change to the format of docker compose…

They might be referring to this? https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/183

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The places where I worked there's an inverse relationship - the smaller the cost, the harder it is to justify with finances. ($4000 monthly AWS bill for "testing purposes"? No questions asked. $10 wireless mouse? Mission impossible!)

In case you aren't aware, it's easy to explain by that fact that most finance departments are afraid to question your spendings on grounds of looking incompetent. So it's less about 10$ and more about: "I understand what a wireless mouse is and it doesn't look mission critical to me." "No idea what those items on that AWS bill mean, but I'll probably be better off not asking"

“2.4Ghz Laser Based Human Interface Device, $10” seems cheap approved.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#224

So many people in this thread don’t understand how enterprise decisions get made. The business license costs $21/month, probably less in reality. Do you really think that businesses are going to jeopardize the workflows of their $250k/year assets over a very core piece of software for $250/year? Any alternative has switching costs and risks. Companies will just pay this. I see so many people saying “just do these 10…

That math changes a lot in companies that don’t sell tech as their profits margin aren’t as fat. It also changes when you have 1000s of developers.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#225
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So unless I'm missing something important, why not just use docker engine directly on a wsl2 instance?

Is that working? Does wsl2 provide more than a shell?

Last I recall, docker desktop on windows explicitly recommended WSL2 over Hyper-V or whatever based setups.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#226

So many people in this thread don’t understand how enterprise decisions get made. The business license costs $21/month, probably less in reality. Do you really think that businesses are going to jeopardize the workflows of their $250k/year assets over a very core piece of software for $250/year? Any alternative has switching costs and risks. Companies will just pay this. I see so many people saying “just do these 10…

That's not how it works in my experience. If it costs more than 0 but less than 10k, the pencil pushers at procurement wont even answer your emails...

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s assuming some kind soul in engineering management has the patience and leverage to guide this through 10 layers of purchasing, procurement, finance, legal etc… Another likely outcome is that it’s “easier” for teams to switch to another tool (easier in that at least they’re not waiting on a third party for approval) and everyone loses a lot of time Big corporations are not the most efficient beasts for this kin…

This poster has clearly worked at the same kind of companies I have. Plenty of them would gladly burn 10x what it would cost to just buy the damn license on engineering man-hours switching something that's inferior but free. Because it doesn't show up as an expense on the annual budget. The concept of opportunity cost is completely lost on a lot of business leaders.

If someone suggests a tool that costs $1k/yr over a free tool that costs $5k/year in extra work, I’m going to die on the free tool hill. Because the $1k/yr tool will disappear when the company goes defunct, or it won’t interoperate with something else and there is no way of fixing it. Or it can’t migrate to the next tool. Or we need to upgrade to an enterprise license because we become 21 developers instead of 20. Or they just bump the cost to $20k for whatever reason. Or the tool won’t work on CI servers because it only works after entering a key in an attended install (yes this is still a thing).

Free tools have a predictable and stable cost.

I have probably been burned more times from free tools over the years, but the scars aren’t as deep. It’s just a shrug and hoping the other project works when the first doesn’t.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s assuming some kind soul in engineering management has the patience and leverage to guide this through 10 layers of purchasing, procurement, finance, legal etc… Another likely outcome is that it’s “easier” for teams to switch to another tool (easier in that at least they’re not waiting on a third party for approval) and everyone loses a lot of time Big corporations are not the most efficient beasts for this kin…

Perhaps you're not understanding corporate bureaucracy. Nobody wants to be the manager who gets fired for trying to save $25k by switching from Docker Desktop to {insert random open source project here}. Not only is it not worth the time or the risk, but the engineering manager's exact purpose is to traverse the corporate bureaucracy. It gives them job security. Plus the engineering manager can negotiate big discount…

It's not the manager, it's some department somewhere else that'll take weeks to respond and then you'll have to chat with them about it and they'll be like "i don't see why this is necessary"
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