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For a while, Docker seemed to focus on developer experience. ahh yes, docker desktop, where the error messages are "something went wrong", and the primary debugging step is to wipe it, uninstall, and reinstall.
It is honestly incredible that such an important part of the Windows dev process is nearly unusable. It is easily the most fickle and opaque bit of software that I am required to depend upon.
- take advantage of the current agentic wave and announce a Docker Sandbox runner product that lets you run agents inside cloud sandboxes
But the actual experience with developing on VSCode with Dev Containers is not great. It's laggy and slow.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "Fair Source" [1] and "Fair Code" [2] licenses are sustainable and user-friendly. Imagine if Docker the company could charge AWS and Google for their use of their technology. Imagine if Redis, Elastic, and so many other technologies could. Modern database companies will typically dual license their work so they don't have their lunch eaten. I've done it for some of my own work [3]. You want your customers to have…
Charging companies for software is as old as computers itself. We don't have to imagine.
Big tech companies saw this as an opportunity to build proprietary value-add systems around open source, but not make those systems in turn open. As they scaled, it became impossible to compete. You're not paying Redis for Redis. You're paying AWS or Google.
> Docker created a standard so successful that it became infrastructure, and infrastructure is hard to monetize Open infrastructure is hard to monetize. Old school robotics players have a playbook for this. You may or may not agree DBs are infra but Oracle has done well by capitalistic standards. The reality is in our economy exploitation is a basic requirement. Nothing says a company providing porcelain for Linux ke…
The "Fair Source" [1] and "Fair Code" [2] licenses are sustainable and user-friendly. Imagine if Docker the company could charge AWS and Google for their use of their technology. Imagine if Redis, Elastic, and so many other technologies could. Modern database companies will typically dual license their work so they don't have their lunch eaten. I've done it for some of my own work [3]. You want your customers to have…
I can't imagine. Tell me one software project used in AWS/GCP that Amazon/Google pay for. Not donations (like for Linux), but PAID for.
Docker started as a wrapper over LXC, Amazon has enough developers to implement that in a month.
Sorry off topic question but has Docker come up with a easy to use dev solution. I always end up with using Devcontainer: it solves the sandboxed, ready to use dev env. But the actual experience with developing on VSCode with Dev Containers is not great. It's laggy and slow.
I have also used them remotely (ssh and using tailscale) and noticed a little lag, but nothing really distracting.
> Docker created a standard so successful that it became infrastructure, and infrastructure is hard to monetize Open infrastructure is hard to monetize. Old school robotics players have a playbook for this. You may or may not agree DBs are infra but Oracle has done well by capitalistic standards. The reality is in our economy exploitation is a basic requirement. Nothing says a company providing porcelain for Linux ke…
The "Fair Source" [1] and "Fair Code" [2] licenses are sustainable and user-friendly. Imagine if Docker the company could charge AWS and Google for their use of their technology. Imagine if Redis, Elastic, and so many other technologies could. Modern database companies will typically dual license their work so they don't have their lunch eaten. I've done it for some of my own work [3]. You want your customers to have…
An "issue" is that Docker these days mostly builds on open standards and has well documented APIs. Open infrastructure like this has only limited vendor lock-in.
Building a docker daemon compatible service is not trivial but was already mostly done with podman. It is compatible to the extent that the official docker cli mostly works with it oob (having implemented the basic Docker HTTP API endpoints too). AWS/GCP could almost certainly afford to build a "podman" too, instead of licensing Docked.
This is not meant to defend the hyperscalers themselves but should maybe out approaches like this in perspective. Docker got among other things large because it was free, monetizing after that is hard (see also Elasticsearch/Redis and the immediate forks).