Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 597 posts

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#461

Post by ash_while »

dpratt wrote: post #33

This appears to be cutting of their nose to spite their face. We have a team of 50+ engineers that all use Docker for Mac for daily development tasks, but I suspect that will no longer be true in a rather short amount of time. Frankly, I don’t really know if anybody actually uses the UI components for it outside of starting and stopping the engine and for basic configuration of the VM. Everything else that comes with…

I made https://github.com/lime-green/remote-docker-aws a while ago and I've been happily using it for about a year. It throws docker in a ec2 VM and allows you to call docker as if it were running locally by tunneling and syncing files. The network file systems I tried (sshfs, nfs) were way too slow when used as docker volumes so it uses a tool called unison which does two-way file syncing (rsync only does one way, which is a problem for something like making django migrations)

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#462

Post by eitland »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #435
qeternity wrote: post #130

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…

Yes, yes they would. And they do. Regularly. When you've spent enough time in the IT Department, you'll see companies demand that you "cut laptop costs" or similar. Because when you're buying 250 laptops a year, the people with the budgets go "OMG we're spending half a million a year on laptops". So changes are made to the configuration, maybe small SSD but often times it'll be something like less RAM, or slower CPU…

You basically typed out what I feel.

Let me add something useful here and say that it even has a name:

"subscription fatigue"

I was fine paying Netflix for an all-I-can-watch even if I ended up watching less than a DVDs worth of content just for the convenience of not keeping a stack of DVDs around.

I'm not fine with paying Netflix, HBO, Disney, my cable provider, NRK (state owned broadcastee,mandatory) etc etc a monthly or yearly fee.

So I just drop it: it is not like I need to watch it.

Same with tools: I'm happy to bug my company to pay for IntelliJ as long as NetBeans is stuck in its current spot, we already pay for Jira and Confluence but I am always seeking out the open source solutions, - partially because I'm old enough to realize that $n in subscription means $n x 12 x m devs a year, partially no cost open source (contrary to popular belief here) is less hassle and partially because going proprietary feels like paying Dane geld.

Edit:

> Almost no one at a higher level looks at the puzzle and goes "Well we should spend $250/year to get this $250,000 asset productive". They look at the situation and go "We've got 100 developers, ain't no way we're spending $25k/year on this product. It's not in budget."

Probably true in most places and it is sometimes a problem.

But that institutional hesitation is also a powerful defense against every vendor who wants to inject themselves somewhere and then start jacking up the prices.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#463

Post by fnord77 »

qeternity wrote: post #130

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…

> 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?

YES! I've seen it. Stinginess at my shop regularly causes hours and hours of pricey engineering resources to address problems caused by underallocating cloud resources to the point things fail - or refusal to allow some cloud service because it will cost $100/month (despite saving 10s of thousands in eng resources)

It's crazy but I bet it happens many places.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#464

Post by MereInterest »

wahern wrote: post #460
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies where engineers were trusted to make small purchasing decisions. It works well for a while, but eventually everyone accumulates a lot of random recurring charges and the company cracks down. $21 is nothing for a one-time spend. $21 per month per employee is now $252/year per employee, but now you also need someone managing all of these licenses and accounting. Every new…

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

Because it establishes an exploitative precedent that shouldn't be followed. Because it hides the true cost of a project, which may result in poor decisions later on. Because the cost of a decision/process should fall on the person or company who has the ability to change it. Because using wages to pay for business expenses wasn't part of the employment agreement. Any one of these would suffice.

For personal expenses (meaning expenses for my own hobby projects, not "personal expenses" to mean business expenses paid by an employee as you have used it), $21 would be a quick decision. But using that same $21 to shore up a faulty requisition process? Nope, not at all.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#465

Post by MarkMarine »

wahern wrote: post #460
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies where engineers were trusted to make small purchasing decisions. It works well for a while, but eventually everyone accumulates a lot of random recurring charges and the company cracks down. $21 is nothing for a one-time spend. $21 per month per employee is now $252/year per employee, but now you also need someone managing all of these licenses and accounting. Every new…

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

A couple comments earlier people were talking about where does this stop, 1000$ a month? A 3D CAD license with the ability to do FEA is around 30 grand a year, I’ve seen seats of specialized software cost north of 100k a year per seat, and that’s for people that 100k is probably pretty close to their take home.

So where does it stop? Is 250$ ok but 1000 isn’t?

I think we’ve set the line just fine, if you want to cover opex out of pocket, cool. But don’t try to put that on people who can’t afford it.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#466

Post by wahern »

MereInterest wrote: post #464
wahern wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

Because it establishes an exploitative precedent that shouldn't be followed. Because it hides the true cost of a project, which may result in poor decisions later on. Because the cost of a decision/process should fall on the person or company who has the ability to change it. Because using wages to pay for business expenses wasn't part of the employment agreement. Any one of these would suffice. For personal expenses…

The problem is that there's simply no easy fix for these bureaucratic frictions and sub-optimal equilibriums. It's the nature of large organizations--they trade efficiencies in some areas for inefficiencies in others.

I decided long ago not to worry about such expenses because 1) the engineer in me hates this inefficiency and urges me to fix or work around it (depending on your perspective), 2) navigating bureaucratic red tape takes a personal toll, and as someone who is paid well I don't mind at all spending a trivial amount of money for my own wellbeing, even if its for work, and 3) as someone who has worked in startups and even founded one, I've both been in a position where I was expected to take on such expenses and expected others to do the same (at least as an initial matter[1]).

[1] The dilemma is that unless the purchaser faces some risk of incurring the expense themself, they're not as incentivized to consider the reasonableness of the purchase. The solution is either 1) requiring permission beforehand, or 2) hiring more mature employees who understand the nature of the dilemma and who have already factored this responsibility and risk into their negotiated compensation. The latter doesn't scale, though, which is why large organizations invariably regress to the former.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#467

Post by racecar789 »

namdnay wrote: post #158
qeternity wrote: post #130

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 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…

Easier method to deal with monthly payment...Create a purchase order with 12 lines. One line for each month with dollar amounts defined. The purchase order serves as the "approval" so Accounts Payable can process without asking for coding information.

Example: I only have to revisit licensing once a year, to create a new 12 line purchase order. It's still a pain but I prefer purchase orders vs dealing with credit cards. In addition, querying expense history for purchase order lines provides far more detail vs querying a credit card platform. Credit card history tends to go into a black hole.

One possible hitch...Some companies might restrict Accounts Payable from receiving purchase orders for separation-of-duties reasons.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#468

Post by Spooky23 »

qeternity wrote: post #130

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…

Absolutely.

The pricing model for this is really stupid. A $21/mo subscription is a pain in the ass — they would be better off just selling it perpetual for $1000.

I ran a big enterprise shop for years. Nuisance licensing like this costs a fortune - I’d need to go do legal review, have it tracked for renewals and compliance, etc. Freemium product like this is always coupled with a stupid license enforcement audit that appears and tries to extort you. For a small quantity, overhead may be more than the product.

As an enterprise consumer, it makes me question the viability of the company. $250 a year is priced to allow unit managers to use P-Cards to avoid procurement processes. It’s too cheap to make meaningful amounts of money, so unless it’s a way to shift me to a more intelligent model, I’d have folks assigned to investigate alternatives.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#470

Post by robocat »

kristjansson wrote: post #276
acdha wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other big factor: certain other vendors have very aggressive sales tactics which essentially boil down to “buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need or we’ll audit every computer in your company and charge a penalty for anything we can find to quibble with”. Docker doesn’t need to actually do that to run afoul of policies based on the scar tissue from those other vendors. Simply going from “you can use it without being…

Yup, this is the concern. Having been kindly asked by Oracle to remove virtualbox extensions, this sort of gotcha/conditional pricing feels dangerous

Some years back I tried to pay the $50 for the VBox extensions - small company and I was the only user. They were very confused, almost like they couldn’t understand that I really wanted to pay for something that I judged good value for the money.

They ended up telling me to forget about it.

I guess that perhaps they only want to target large businesses.

Post reply on HN