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Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

blog.alexellis.io

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Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What state are you thinking of? The containers are ephemeral and the dependencies are well specified in it. You can complain about shipping Ubuntu, but the rest of this doesn’t make sense.

Makes perfect sense to me, sadly. The dependencies are specified in excessively, that's why everyone is shipping Ubuntu. This is caused by and further facilitates the development style of "do not track what we use, just ship everything". Also, the dependencies are specified in container images, which themselves are derivative artifacts and not the original source code, and these dependencies often change in different…

It doesn't have to be a choice of containers or nix though. You can put your nix built applications into a container just fine. You can also pull an image from somewhere else and shove nix stuff into it as well.

There is definitely a bit of a learning curve but the time investment is frequently over exaggerated. I see it as similar to the borrow checker in rust. Yes, you have to spend some time and also learn about the rules. But it helps you build software that is more robust and correct. Plus once you're into it you save significant time not having to deal with dependencies especially when bringing on new people

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#352

Docker the tool has been a massive benefit to software development, every now and then I have a moan about the hassle of getting something bootstrapped to run on Docker, but it's still worlds better than the old ways of managing dependencies and making sure everyone on a project is aligned on what versions of things are installed. Unfortunately Docker the company appears to be dying, this is the latest in a long line…

Can't comment specifically on this or that "dying company", but it is a bit disappointing that after, how many, four decades of open source? and the obvious utility of that paradigm, it still seems a major challenge to build sustainable open source ecosystems. This means we can't really move on and imagine grander things that might build on top of each other.

Its not clear if that is due to:

i) competition from proprietary business models

ii) more specifically the excessive concentration of said proprietary business models ("big tech")

iii) confusion from conflicting objectives and monetisation incentives (the various types of licenses etc)

iv) ill-adapted funding models (venture capital)

v) intrinsic to the concept and there is no solution

vi) just not having matured yet enough

What I am driving at is that building more complex structures requires some solid foundations and those typically require building blocks following some proven blueprint. Somehow much around open source is still precarious and made up. Ideally you'd want to walk into the chamber of commerce (or maybe the chamber of open source entities), pick a name, a legal entity type, a sector and get going. You focus on your solutions, not on how to survive in a world that doesn't quite know what to make of you.

Now, corporate structures and capital markets etc took hundreds of years to settle (and are still flawed in many ways) but we do live in accelerated times so maybe its just a matter of getting our act together?

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the pdf there's mention to terry davis so I'm tempted to think this is actually a bit of a troll.

That PDF links to https://web.archive.org/web/20210223111850/https://www.nerve... . Would be quite the troll to go to the effort of buying a domain just to mess with an open source author.

You're probably right - I assumed the name terry davis being embedded in an email following a schizophrenic rant about software was a ruse.

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#354

As an SRE Manager, this is causing me a hell of a headache this morning. In 30 days a bunch of images we depend on may just disappear. We mostly depend on images from relatively large organizations (`alpine`, `node`, `golang`, etc), so one would want to believe that we'll be fine - they're all either in the open source program or will pay. But I can't hang my hat on that. If those images disappear, we lose the abilit…

The images you mention (alpine, node, golang) are all so-called “Docker Official Images”. Those are all the ones without a slash as the namespace separator in them: https://hub.docker.com/search?q=&type=image&image_filter=off... They are versioned and reviewed here: https://github.com/docker-library/official-images I don't expect them to go away. Disclosure: I maintain two of them (spiped, adminer).

Useful information, bad look for Docker - "Oh, no slash as the namespace separator. Good and easy way to tell, that's how I would've done it!".

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#355

As an SRE Manager, this is causing me a hell of a headache this morning. In 30 days a bunch of images we depend on may just disappear. We mostly depend on images from relatively large organizations (`alpine`, `node`, `golang`, etc), so one would want to believe that we'll be fine - they're all either in the open source program or will pay. But I can't hang my hat on that. If those images disappear, we lose the abilit…

First of all, want to say, that sounds deeply frustrating.

Secondly, if this is a serious worry. I would recommend creating your own private docker registry.

https://docs.docker.com/registry/deploying/

Then I would download all current versions of the images you use within your org and push them up to said registry.

It’s not a perfect solution, but you’ll be able to pull the images if they disappear and considering this will take only a few minutes to set up somewhere, could be a life saver.

As well, I should note that most cloud providers also have a container registry service you can use instead of this. We use the google one to back up vital images to in case Docker Hub were to have issues.

Is this a massive pain in the butt? Yup! But it sure beats failed deploys! Good luck out there!

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#356

Docker the tool has been a massive benefit to software development, every now and then I have a moan about the hassle of getting something bootstrapped to run on Docker, but it's still worlds better than the old ways of managing dependencies and making sure everyone on a project is aligned on what versions of things are installed. Unfortunately Docker the company appears to be dying, this is the latest in a long line…

Docker should have been a neat tool made by one enthusiast, just like curl is. Instead it has a multi-million dollar company behind it, and VC's who demand profits from a thing that shouldn't have ever had a business plan.

FWIW, Docker was not intended originally to be a tool for commercialization; it grew out of dotCloud, which open sourced the tool as a last-ditch-effort of sorts, if memory serves.

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we not allowed to complain about unnecessary unplanned work being foisted on us with 30 days notice? That seems like an entirely relevant complaint for this forum but from your first reply, you’re acting like somehow it’s the greatest offense in the world that someone pointed this out.

Come on, 30 days notice is a walk in the park. Additionally, OP was the one complaining that changing a few URLs and eventually spinning up a new server. It's quite literally a one day or two job, unless you're at a company the size of Amazon (in which case, luckily for you, you're not the only SRE, so it's still just a few days). > The best I can come up with, at the moment, is waiting for each organization to make…

“Tell me you’ve never worked an enterprise tech job without telling me you’ve never worked an enterprise tech job.”

My next 30 days are already accounted for, and will already include disruptions that actually come from the area of work.

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#358
post #120

Docker the tool has been a massive benefit to software development, every now and then I have a moan about the hassle of getting something bootstrapped to run on Docker, but it's still worlds better than the old ways of managing dependencies and making sure everyone on a project is aligned on what versions of things are installed. Unfortunately Docker the company appears to be dying, this is the latest in a long line…

It packaged containers that we already knew from other UNIX and mainframe/micros systems.

Sir computers nothing but we already known from Alen Turing.

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podman-compose isn't fully compatible with the new compose spec. Also I really don't care if docker has a daemon or not, for me it offers feature like auto starting containers without bothering with SystemD, and auto updates using watchtower and the docker socket. And since podman doesn't have an official distro package repo like docker, you are stuck use whatever old version shipped in your distro without recent imp…

> Also I really don't care if docker has a daemon or not, for me it offers feature like auto starting containers without bothering with SystemD Bingo, the "pain" of the daemon (it's never cause a single problem for me? Especially on Linux, on macOS I've occasionally had to go start it because it wasn't running, but BFD) saves me from having to touch systemd. Or, indeed, from caring WTF distro I'm running and which in…

To be fair, every mainstream distro now uses Systemd

Re: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know

#360

As an SRE Manager, this is causing me a hell of a headache this morning. In 30 days a bunch of images we depend on may just disappear. We mostly depend on images from relatively large organizations (`alpine`, `node`, `golang`, etc), so one would want to believe that we'll be fine - they're all either in the open source program or will pay. But I can't hang my hat on that. If those images disappear, we lose the abilit…

> Which are members of the open source program and which aren't.

You can tell which are members of the open source program if you go to their docker hub page and you'll see a banner "SPONSORED OSS"

Here is an example:

https://hub.docker.com/r/rclone/rclone

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