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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

#201

Post by doctor_eval »

paxys wrote: post #186
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> almost done

The last 10% takes 90% of the time.

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

#202

Post by jstepka »

szastamasta wrote: post #114

Great to hear that. While I’m not a big fan of Docker desktop I really wish they restart docker swarm and kill thad abomination named Kubernetes. Docker compose and swarm are really cool technologies - easy to start with and more than enough for small and medium companies. I really hope they would bring it back and we start seeing managed swarm from cloud providers.

Docker swarm was sold off.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/mirantis-acquires-docker-e...

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

#203

Post by doctor_eval »

cheriot wrote: post #191
roughly wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've had more productivity loss than that from docker's bugs and CPU/battery drain. We don't use docker in prod so why use it for dev? I need a container not this power hungry daemon and annoying UI. As I type this my laptop is hot because docker needs to be reset and restarted.

This is what drove me away from docker in the first place - only to find there’s little alternative today. Honestly, the poor reliability of docker on any platform, for so many years, has tainted it in my mind and I will change in a heartbeat if something better comes along.

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

#204

Post by dathinab »

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…

I think you are overestimating how much most developers world wide are payed. Something like $150k+/yr might be something you can get in silicon valley but outside of the US this level of payment is reserved to a small number of senior developer.

Through that doesn't really change your arguments point.

Through I also would argue that while some companies are tightly coupled to docker desktop many others are not (and can easily migrate) or need to migrate to other tooling for other non-payment reasons.

If you only need containers (e.g. docker cli) but not docker desktop podman is already a drop in replacement in many case, one which in certain aspects is even much better to boost(*1).

(1): Through that is only on Linux and it's not a clear cut "this is better" but more a "subtle differences can make it much better but also worse depending on what you do/are looking for".

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

#205

Post by radiator »

ilyt wrote: post #176
speedgoose wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is too short to spend a third of your active life left on a locked down corporate laptop. You should be admin.

I mean, the corporate is paying you for that time either way so that's their loss really

Yes, they pay you for that time, so what? Are you also not losing if you are not satisfied with your working environment?

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

#206

Post by samcat116 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #16
paxys wrote: post #8

I remember everyone had written Docker off for dead when they announced their updated pricing plans, but they really made perfect sense, and I am happy to see the company recover. A large chunk of the tech world today relies on their products, but they were making next to nothing for it. It is definitely worth it for large companies to throw a few dollars their way considering the massive amount of value they are get…

It just goes to show how what enterprise customers value and what individual developers value are two very different things.

True. People should see how much Salesforce licenses cost.

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

#207

Post by dathinab »

ilyt wrote: post #164
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…

> that's nearly $200k in developer costs spent replacing a tool that's gonna cost your 250 person company $30k/year. the 250 person companies are not building the replacement, the 2k+ ones will. And likely ones that fit their internal architecture better so there are productivity gains to be had on top of that

and they are also building replacements because it's beneficial for their business for various reasons

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

#208

Post by eastbound »

keewee7 wrote: post #158
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…

This article from 2013 might give an indication on why some people choose FOSS even when they can afford the non-FOSS solutions: The licensing. My God, the licensing. It's not so much the money, as the infernal, mind-bending tax code level complexity involved in making sure all your software is properly licensed: determining what 'level' and 'edition' you are licensed at, who is licensed to use what, which servers ar…

Note that the Cloud resolves licensing in that you can’t consume resources you’re not licensed for (although “uncapped cloud” lets you consume resources that you don’t know are paying for).

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

#209

Post by kdrag0n »

uberduper wrote: post #192
kdrag0n wrote: post #151

Looks like there's a lot of discussion about Docker Desktop alternatives here, so shameless plug: I've been working on a new Linux+Docker+Kubernetes solution for macOS recently! Already has quite a few improvements over existing apps including Docker Desktop, Rancher, Colima, etc: - Fast networking: 30 Gbps! vs. 150 Mbps with Docker VPNKit. Full VPN compatibility, IPv6, ping, ICMP and UDP traceroute, and half-open TC…

I haven't used a mac for quite some time and when I did, I used docker-machine. I recall from my use and from trying to help others that were using docker desktop, it was unusually difficult to make your ssh-agent available in a container. If that's still an issue, then please figure out a way to make that seamless.

I have seamless ssh agent forwarding for full Linux distros, so if you're running Docker from a Linux shell (like you would in WSL), then the usual way (https://gist.github.com/d11wtq/8699521) should just work. Making it work when running Docker directly from macOS will be challenging, but I'll dig into it and see what's possible. Thanks for bringing it up!

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

#210

Post by twblalock »

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…

There is not just cost to count. There is also value in having a custom solution that is well integrated into your other tools, and value in avoiding vendor lock-in. Large companies build a lot of their own internal tooling for those reasons.

Let's say there was no open source replacement (that's not true, or at least it's not going to be true when Podman and Rancher improve, but for the sake of argument...)

What would prevent Docker from doubling the subscription right now? Tripling it?

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