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Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

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Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#181

Post by uberduper »

thefounder wrote: post #38
warinukraine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Docker Desktop exactly?

The thing that I have to install on MacOS so that I can run docker. Is there any other way(i.e no gui utility) ?

You've been able to `brew install docker-machine` for like 10 years. Docker Desktop just gave you a UI for stopping and starting things. Eventually they added some kubernetes stuff and a kubernetes context switcher. Dunno what else it did since I always installed via brew.

I would have been a docker desktop user for years but the one time I went to install it they required me to create an account to get to the download.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#182

Post by ilyt »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #136

I'm surprised Docker Desktop drives so much revenue. As far as I know, it is a Mac and Windows-specific tool. Are FAANG and FAANG-like developers not using Linux machines locally despite deploying production software on Linux servers? Even for enterprise developers who use Mac and Windows, isn't 99% of day-to-day development on a Linux box you SSH into anyways? I've never really quite grasped the need for Docker Desk…

There is a myth that software developers are good with computers but that's mostly not the case, hence heavy mac/windows usage, harder to break than someone with linux machine and root.

Also Ubuntu kinda breaks more for normal users.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#183

Post by ilyt »

jitl wrote: post #50
Patrol8394 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just cashed out; enterprise had to pay, for now, while evaluating and migrating to free alternatives. I don't think it will be a sustainable growth.

For a 100-300 developer company running macs, I don’t think the current “free” alternatives would be less expensive than paying for Docker Desktop. I managed wrappers around Vagrant when Airbnb was that size and boy howdy did the whole org pay for every bit of the quality difference between Virtualbox+Vagrant and the Docker Desktop of today. I would rather buy a reliable GUI for fiddling and resetting the VM, wrangli…

Well, check in a year when alternatives will have both userbase and time to develop.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#184

Post by HatchedLake721 »

roughly wrote: post #142
_skel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the initial negative take on the license change was correct, and this is the dying gasp of the company. It's just taking longer than expected to replace Docker Desktop. But I am seeing a lot of progress on Podman and Rancher and a few others, and some of the larger tech companies are also building in-house replacements. A lot of the people who had to scramble to find a replacement are not happy about it. In…

What gets me about this is the math doesn't make any sense. Docker charges $10/developer/month. Those developers are paid $150k+/yr, fully loaded to the company (insurance, taxes, accounting, etc) is probably double that, but call it $250k/yr to be nice. You take 3 developers and have them spend a quarter on replacing Docker Desktop, that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your…

Amen. This is why I don’t want to sell to developers.

“Here’s a solution that will save you hours every month, it’s only $9 p/m.”

“$9 p/m???” - asked a developer choking on their avocado toast

“That’s the same price as Spotify! Meh, I can develop the same thing myself in 2 weeks.”

2 months later.

"Well, it's almost done. At least I won't be wasting $9 p/m."

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#185

Post by uberduper »

ahepp wrote: post #149
brianwawok wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux I just install some stuff from apt, so I assume you can brew install something to run it command line (no GUI)

Docker uses container functionality specific to the Linux kernel. So on Linux, you can install a relatively lightweight engine. But on MacOS or Windows, you need to install the entire "Docker Desktop" app, which secretly spins up a Linux VM in the background, and presents a (pretty poor) abstraction as if this is all running on the host machine.

docker-machine from brew sets up the linux vm using one of a few virtualization options. iirc I always used bhyve and never had to give it a second thought.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#186

Post by paxys »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #184
roughly wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets me about this is the math doesn't make any sense. Docker charges $10/developer/month. Those developers are paid $150k+/yr, fully loaded to the company (insurance, taxes, accounting, etc) is probably double that, but call it $250k/yr to be nice. You take 3 developers and have them spend a quarter on replacing Docker Desktop, that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your…

Amen. This is why I don’t want to sell to developers. “Here’s a solution that will save you hours every month, it’s only $9 p/m.” “$9 p/m???” - asked a developer choking on their avocado toast “That’s the same price as Spotify! Meh, I can develop the same thing myself in 2 weeks.” 2 months later. "Well, it's almost done. At least I won't be wasting $9 p/m."

> 2 months later.

> "Well, it's almost done. At least I won't be wasting $9 p/m."

That is wildly optimistic.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#187

Post by skywhopper »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #184
roughly wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets me about this is the math doesn't make any sense. Docker charges $10/developer/month. Those developers are paid $150k+/yr, fully loaded to the company (insurance, taxes, accounting, etc) is probably double that, but call it $250k/yr to be nice. You take 3 developers and have them spend a quarter on replacing Docker Desktop, that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your…

Amen. This is why I don’t want to sell to developers. “Here’s a solution that will save you hours every month, it’s only $9 p/m.” “$9 p/m???” - asked a developer choking on their avocado toast “That’s the same price as Spotify! Meh, I can develop the same thing myself in 2 weeks.” 2 months later. "Well, it's almost done. At least I won't be wasting $9 p/m."

In my experience it’s not developers who balk at such fees. Management gets very nervous about every $5 and $10/month tool that folks want to use and regularly insists on trimming seats.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#188

Post by paxys »

twblalock wrote: post #145
roughly wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets me about this is the math doesn't make any sense. Docker charges $10/developer/month. Those developers are paid $150k+/yr, fully loaded to the company (insurance, taxes, accounting, etc) is probably double that, but call it $250k/yr to be nice. You take 3 developers and have them spend a quarter on replacing Docker Desktop, that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your…

If you do the same math for a company with thousands, or tens of thousands, of developers, the answer looks different. Large companies already have dedicated teams for stuff that is a lot less critical than the container runtime. The companies that are too big to avoid paying, but too small to build a replacement, are the ones that are in a jam -- for now. But in a year or two, Podman or Rancher might might fully mee…

More users = greater need for dedicated support. A company that has tens of thousands of developers will need an entire team staffed up just to answer questions and troubleshoot issues with their homegrown Docker replacement, and the end result will be that the team gets laid off and the company just buys licenses because that is far cheaper.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#189

Post by jvanderbot »

roughly wrote: post #142
_skel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the initial negative take on the license change was correct, and this is the dying gasp of the company. It's just taking longer than expected to replace Docker Desktop. But I am seeing a lot of progress on Podman and Rancher and a few others, and some of the larger tech companies are also building in-house replacements. A lot of the people who had to scramble to find a replacement are not happy about it. In…

What gets me about this is the math doesn't make any sense. Docker charges $10/developer/month. Those developers are paid $150k+/yr, fully loaded to the company (insurance, taxes, accounting, etc) is probably double that, but call it $250k/yr to be nice. You take 3 developers and have them spend a quarter on replacing Docker Desktop, that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your…

N employees, M internal tooling maintenance cost, Y for years.

120 * N * Y vs M * Y looks very attractive for large N and small M, esp when that 120 may suddenly increase without warning (again).

It's still just math.

Re: Docker 2.0 went from $11M to $135M in 2 years

#190

Post by alexeldeib »

roughly wrote: post #154
twblalock wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do the same math for a company with thousands, or tens of thousands, of developers, the answer looks different. Large companies already have dedicated teams for stuff that is a lot less critical than the container runtime. The companies that are too big to avoid paying, but too small to build a replacement, are the ones that are in a jam -- for now. But in a year or two, Podman or Rancher might might fully mee…

Ok, I'll do the math: $250k/yr/developer, so for 1 quarter, that's $62.5k, 3 developers for one quarter is $187.5k. Docker costs $10/mo, or $120/yr, so for 1000 developers, that's $120k/yr, or a payoff time of 1.5 years, assuming nobody ever has to touch anything ever again. Let's say our solution requires 1 developer-quarter per year to maintain - bugfixes, upgrades, deployments, etc. That's $62.5k/yr. That pushes o…

> Let's say our solution causes a net decrease in developer productivity of 1%

This is an extremely aggressive assumption, and affects the entire equation. What happens when you achieve parity in 1 month, because actually, docker isn't that important? nerdctl + containerd basically eliminate my need for docker in a work context. nerdctl only for my local development.

Tech companies with XX thousand employees already have dedicated infrastructure teams of all sorts. This math doesn't feel like it reflects reality of the marginal costs and payoff time.

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