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Docker's Second Death

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Re: Docker's Second Death

#11

Post by skrebbel »

I feel like I'm missing some key insight here. To me, the tl;dr of this post is: Kubernetes removed the need for Docker just to run container images in a k8s cluster, ergo, Docker is dead.

But Kubernetes is super complicated. The author seems to assume that everybody wants to run everything in Kubernetes, but if I want to run some backend on some server (or maybe on a few servers), then it feels like extreme overkill.

Now, I'm no guru in this field at all. In fact, one thing I always liked about Docker is it made you feel able to atomically deploy software without having to become an expert at anything first. But what's the current "don't have to be an expert" way to ship software if Docker is, supposedly, dead? Do we all have to learn Kubernetes?

I've never used Swarm but I've been told that one thing it had going for this is that it allowed you to do smallish setups pretty easily. If that's true, then I'm sad it lost the popularity war.

Re: Docker's Second Death

#12

Post by hmottestad »

I enjoyed the following:

> Though it [Docker] does live on strongly within CI/CD ecosystems and, ostensibly, the inner loop of development thanks to the de facto standard Dockerfile.

Docker will still live on for both Windows and Mac developers. As a platform for running production code it might be dead or dying, but as an ecosystem and a development tool it will continue to live and probably thrive.

Docker is still the simplest way to install Elasticsearch, to make sure everyone on your team is using the same Java version, or run up a production equivalent environment on your laptop. Regardless of if you are on Linux, Mac or Windows.

I still love Docker and hope they end up finding a good business model so they can continue to live on.

Re: Docker's Second Death

#13

Post by DonHopkins »

coward8675309 wrote: post #10
lima wrote: post #6

So, what's the better business model for a low-level piece of infrastructure like Docker?

Docker, Inc. has the opportunity to be the NPM, Inc. for container images. How much did NPM sell to GitHub for? Less concretely, is there a business model for a low-level piece of infrastructure like Docker? Is there a business model for ncurses or readline or df or ls? "Real world" infrastructure is typically high capex, low margin. How many VC-funded startups build bridges or tunnels? SpaceX is pivoting to Starlink…

I'd buy an lscon t-shirt!

Re: Docker's Second Death

#15

Post by __jf__ »

lima wrote: post #6

So, what's the better business model for a low-level piece of infrastructure like Docker?

There is an interesting talk [0] by Philipp Krenn (Elastic) on “Open Source as a Business. Strategy, struggle, success”. This talk takes the perspective of Elastic, the company behind the open source products Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash, which makes its money with support, the commercial extensions, and cloud offerings. But we are also taking a look at how others are approaching this challenge, what worked, and what failed.

[0] https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2019-2463-open_source_as_a_bus...

Re: Docker's Second Death

#16

Post by mrskitch »

lima wrote: post #6

So, what's the better business model for a low-level piece of infrastructure like Docker?

My own opinion: I think there is as a marketplace. Years ago when I started browserless.io, I wanted to find a way to sell access to the core image of ours. Docker kinda has/had a marketplace, where you can buy access to curated and secure images, but it didn’t get any support or news on it. Because of this we went the open-code route and just sold licenses. Too bad because I’d much rather have had a marketplace to do this instead.

Re: Docker's Second Death

#18

Post by sz4kerto »

skrebbel wrote: post #11

I feel like I'm missing some key insight here. To me, the tl;dr of this post is: Kubernetes removed the need for Docker just to run container images in a k8s cluster, ergo, Docker is dead. But Kubernetes is super complicated . The author seems to assume that everybody wants to run everything in Kubernetes, but if I want to run some backend on some server (or maybe on a few servers), then it feels like extreme overkil…

Swarm was great. It takes literally 30 seconds to put together a cluster with a few nodes. (1 command per host.) The problem was that Docker Inc. tried to push people towards Docker EE (that had all kinds of extra functionality above pure Swarm), but that was super buggy.

Re: Docker's Second Death

#19

Post by goatinaboat »

skrebbel wrote: post #11

I feel like I'm missing some key insight here. To me, the tl;dr of this post is: Kubernetes removed the need for Docker just to run container images in a k8s cluster, ergo, Docker is dead. But Kubernetes is super complicated . The author seems to assume that everybody wants to run everything in Kubernetes, but if I want to run some backend on some server (or maybe on a few servers), then it feels like extreme overkil…

But Kubernetes is super complicated.

It can be, but running minikube or k3s on your laptop is trivial, and what you do with them transfers very easily to real Kubernetes.

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