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Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

theregister.com

331–340 of 597 posts

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#332

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…

Docker for Windows isn't particularly stellar either. For instance, you have to actually log in to a machine to have a docker image running. Additionally only one user on a machine can run the host application at any given time.

I have no idea how this is popular.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#333

As weird as it might seem, Microsoft would probably be the best company to acquire Docker at this point. They could probably turn this around a bit into a free with Windows, pay for Linux (at the 250 employee level - possibly up the employee count to 500 though).

Nah, they should just build a vscode plugin that makes it easy to manage docker running inside WSL2. Bam, Docker Desktop is a beached whale.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Docker Desktop to be equally awful with Windows. You'd think they'd care about giant swathes of the market like that.

> I've found Docker Desktop to be equally awful with Windows. You'd think they'd care about giant swathes of the market like that. The fact that they don't care, and yet you (or if not you, others) still use it, succinctly explains why they do not care. If they have a shitty, buggy client for Mac/Windows, and people complain about it but still use it, then they have no incentive to care.

I use it only when some required tool is only available via docker. It is not a choice for us for any of our development.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#335

Additionally this change is effective starting August 31st 2021 - i.e. now.

(CTO of Docker here) there is a grace period until 31 January next year, we understand that this is a change and people need time to sort out payment.

Curious how bound I'd be to these terms if I just don't upgrade Docker Desktop. I'm not even signed in to dockerhub and most of our containers are on an Azure private registry.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#336
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish they fixed the issue where it uses all available RAM even when running no containers yet.

That’s not an issue though. That’s just how virtual machines work. You’re carving out a chunk of your system for the docker Linux VM that runs your containers. You can open up the docker app and configure a smaller amount of ram if it impacts your host OS

That's not how virtual machines work on Windows. Even Linux virtual machines use dynamic memory. You assign a minimum, maximum, and a startup value. When the machine needs more RAM, Windows give it to it. When it releases it, it's available for other purposes.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#337
post #196

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…

lol obviously you’ve never worked in a giant bureaucratic corporation.

Please don't post personal swipes or unsubstantive comments.

If you know more than other people, that's great, but then please share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you can't do that or don't want to, that's fine, but then please don't post.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#338
post #327
post #283

For everyone who is against this change, can you please write up why? For a ton of small companies (anyone making $10 million or less per year) nothing is going to change and DD is still free to use. If you're at a big organization with let's say 200 developers chances are your company makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Even Docker's most expensive business plan would cost you 200 * $21 = $4,200 month. Pay…

Because procurement processes suck and developers don't want to deal with them. When it's something from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, it's not a problem because those deals are handled at a level that developers don't interact much with and are ingrained as business critical. There's no way we're going to have a contract with Docker by January so I fully expect a "Please uninstall Docker Desktop" email long before that…

What if you asked the person who would write that email to instead ask Docker if they can extend the grace period for you until you can get a contract set up?

Since it's unclear if / how Docker can enforce their TOS I'm guessing they would be happy to extend it because the other avenues lead to you not using DD or using it without paying.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know how they plan to enforce this? Audits into the IP space connecting to hub.docker.com? Maybe arbitrary device OS detection a la (nmap -O $local_subnet | grep -ci 'Macbook') > 250

They won’t need to. The number of 250+ engineer businesses that would risk running unlicensed software is small.

I don't think it's 250 seats, but 250 employees. Lots of fairly low tech businesses (such as restaurant or retail chain or universities) may have less than a dozen docker users but still cross that total threshold.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#340
post #322
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole reason this (and Docker Desktop) are used is that Docker and K8s does not run natively on macOS and Windows. If you’re using Linux already, most of this stuff is as useful as nipples on a breastplate. You could theoretically run an emptied out husk of the app on Linux, but there are much better tools for working with the tools directly. So I’d be greatly surprised if any Linux kernel hackers are miffed abou…

I'm not sure the whole reason for Docker Desktop is that Docker and K8s don't run natively. I mean, someone could create a Linux VM and get them running right through there. The tools exist to do this. There are even programs like minikube that can get you Kubernetes in a VM on Mac. There is something else to it that people want and that translates to Linux, I've learned. They want an easy button with an easy UX. The…

Right and when you're a corporation it cannot be overstated how important it is to coalesce around universal solutions that get up and out of the way with as few steps as possible. Handing new developers a handbook of incantations to get going is very fragile. Handing those same developers one executable with a big Go! button is much easier to get right.

One example from my last job was having one shell.nix in the root of every project folder a developer could nix shell into that contained everything they needed, same version and all, to get going with that project.

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