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What has Docker become?

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Re: What has Docker become?

#261

Post by oso2k »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #239
jeremyjh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So absolutely at least some of that is true. I’d be surprised if the systemd thing was not also true. I think it’s quite likely Docker did not have a good handle on the “needs” of the enterprise space. That is Red Hats bread and butter; are you saying they developed all of that for no reason?

I made no comment about RedHat's offerings. I don't feel like RedHat had to do anything to sell support contracts in this case, because that was already their business. All they had to do was say they'll include container support as part of their contracts. What they did do, AIUI based on feedback in the oss docker repos, is those contracts stipulated that you must run RHEL in the container and the host, and use syst…

   I don't feel like RedHat had to do anything to sell support contracts in this case, because that was already their business. All they had to do was say they'll include container support as part of their contracts.
Correct. Maybe starting with RHEL7, Red Hat took the stance that “containers are Linux”. Supporting Docker in RHEL7 was built-in as soon as we added it to ‘rhel-7-server-extras-rpms’ repo. The containers were supported as “customer workloads” while we docker daemon and cli were supported as part of the OS.

   What they did do, AIUI based on feedback in the oss docker repos, is those contracts stipulated that you must run RHEL in the container and the host, and use systemd in the container in order to be "in support". So that's kind of a self-feeding thing.
Not quite right. RHEL containers (and now UBI containers) are only supported when they run on RHEL OS hosts or RHEL CoreOS hosts as part of an OpenShift cluster. systemd did not work (well?) in containers for a while and has not been ever a requirement. There’s several reasons for this RHEL containers on RHEL/RHCOS requirement. For one, RHEL/UBI containers inherit their subscription information from their host. This is much like how RHEL VMs can inherit their subscription if you have virtualization host-based subscriptions. If containers weren’t tied to their host, then by convention, each container would need to subscribe to Red Hat on instantiation and would consume a Red Hat subscription instance.

https://access.redhat.com/articles/2726611

Re: What has Docker become?

#263

Post by pxc »

pxc wrote: post #230
chuckadams wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix is wonderful for reproducible and declarative infrastructure, but how do you manage multiple server instances with it? I have a handful of projects active at any time, and am currently running four web servers, three mysql instances, two postgres, and a partridge in a pear tree. Should I run Nix in Docker, Docker from Nix, or is there a nix-only solution for this?

You just plug Nix into a service manager that you have Nix bring along for you. Many years ago, I did this for a proof-of-concept at work with supervisord[1] and flake.nix. Devenv[2] builds in[3] support for process-compose[4], which GP mentioned. A few years ago, one long-time Nixer even created[5] a framework, nix-processmgmt[6] that abstracts over various service managers including supervisord and s6[7], which can…

(Actually, now that I think of it, that experiment with supervisor was pre-flakes, so probably shell.nix.)

Re: What has Docker become?

#264

Post by jujube3 »

onraglanroad wrote: post #141
blackcatsec wrote: post #135

I truly do sometimes detest the open source community's often outright hostility towards monetization of software. People gotta eat.

I've been to developer conferences in the US. Lack of food is definitely not a problem.

He shoots, he scores!

Re: What has Docker become?

#265

Post by diceduckmonk »

daveisfera wrote: post #225
mg794613 wrote: post #45

"The problem is that Docker the technology became so successful that Docker the company struggled to monetize it. When your core product becomes commoditized and open source, you need to find new ways to add value." No, everything was already open source, other had done it before too, they just made it in a way a lot of "normal" users could start with it, then they waited too long and others created better/their own…

Arrogance was what actually killed them. They picked fights with Google and RedHat and then showing up at conferences with shirts that said "we don't accept pull requests" tipped the scales so that RedHat and Google both went their own way and their technology was now pushed out of 2 of their biggest channels.

> "we don't accept pull requests"

Any posts on the internet archives to understand the history ?

Re: What has Docker become?

#266

Post by hyperman1 »

shykes wrote: post #231
daveisfera wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was probably a lot going on behind closed doors, but from the outside, it appeared that RedHat was trying to improve the security and technical details of containers, but Docker was just refusing pull requests and not playing nice. This eventually drove RedHat to make their own implementation (i.e. Podman), so it was a self created enemy and not necessarily one that was built-in/inevitable. I'm definitely not a…

I am painfully aware of that narrative. All I can say is that it is a false narrative, deliberately pushed by Red Hat for competitive reasons. There was a deliberate decision to spend marketing dollars making Docker look bad (specifically less secure), at a time where we were competing directly in the datacenter market. Ask yourself: how many open source projects reject PRs every day because of design disagreements?…

If it is pure marketing, I wonder why docker couldn't play the same game and be better at it?

E.g. for your most damning example: If docker published this story, blogged about it, made noice in places like HN, it is exactly what the press would love: RH breaks docker security while claiming to be more secure! The Emperor has no clothes! If you take security serious, accept no fake substitutes!

Re: What has Docker become?

#267

Post by jaynamburi »

Docker started as a simple, opinionated UX around Linux containers and became a product company wrapping an ecosystem that moved on without it.

The original breakthrough wasn’t containers themselves (LXC already existed), but the combination of: a reproducible image format, layered filesystem semantics, a simple CLI, and a registry model that made distribution trivial. That unlocked a whole workflow shift.

What happened next is that Docker the company tried to own the platform, while the industry standardized around the parts that mattered. The runtime split into containerd/runc, orchestration moved to Kubernetes, image specs went to OCI, and “Docker” became more of a developer UX brand than a core infrastructure primitive.

Today Docker mostly means:

A local dev environment (Docker Desktop)

A build UX (Dockerfile, buildx)

A compatibility layer over containerd

A commercial product with licensing constraints

Meanwhile, production container infrastructure largely bypasses Docker entirely.

That’s not failure it’s a common arc. Docker succeeded so well that it got standardized out of the critical path. What remains is a polished on ramp for developers, not the foundation of the container ecosystem.

In other words: Docker won the mindshare, lost the control, and pivoted to selling convenience.

Re: What has Docker become?

#268

Post by bullonabender »

Moto7451 wrote: post #36

One thing that really hurt them from my PoV was how they acted when they changed their licensing structure with respect to revenue generating companies. I’m fine with the idea that licensing Docker and Docker Desktop is a good thing to do. However, I think they just made people distrust their motives with their approached to this. At two places I worked their reps reached out to essentially ensnare the company in a s…

Same here. The rug pull was not received well by our teams. The messaging was terrible. Some still joke it was a like a stick up. "Pulling a docker" has now become internal slang for firms that let you use/build for years and then ransom you later. We pivoted just after too. They also tagged my personal accounts which had nothing to do with my day job.

Re: What has Docker become?

#269

Post by justsomehnguy »

shykes wrote: post #251
justsomehnguy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Bridge' was and still is an established network term for joining two broadcast domains into one. Why the hell you decided to name your NAT'ed network layer a 'bridge'?

As far as I know, Docker uses the term "bridge" in the standard way, to designate the use of Linux bridge interfaces (basically virtual ethernet switches) to interconnect containers. Containers connect to each other via a layer 2 bridge, not NAT.

It has as much sense as calling all the car roads in the world 'bridges'. They are interconnecting some areas via a physical connection, not some 5th dimension magik, after all.

It's even more egregious with 'ipvlan' and 'macvlan' drivers:

> ipvlan Connect containers to external VLANs.

Duh, that's a 'routed network' and nobody cares if it's on a separate vlan or not.

> macvlan Containers appear as devices on the host's network.

And this is a bridge!

Re: What has Docker become?

#270

Post by VLM »

The key business mistake is trying to have too large of a company or having the wrong organization structure.

Consider how a SCM like git or bitkeeper is more complicated than a wrapper for LXC. For some odd reason Docker has almost 100x as many employees as bitkeeper. They're just too big. It would be like trying to create a startup of "/bin/ls as a service" with at least 50 employees and 49 of them would not be able to generate enough revenue to break even much less turn into a billion dollar "LSaaS" tech unicorn. There's not enough meat for the pack. FreeBSD has jails and all of FreeBSD (not just jails, the whole thing) is about a third the size of Docker... hmm.

An alternative to having an appropriate sized company would be giving up on profit. There probably is no way to make "real" money doing what Docker is doing, not "real" in the context of 1500+ employees. It would be very real if they could get their current revenue with 20 employees, but ... That is not bad, that just means they're better off as an IRS 501(c)(3) approved charity rather than trying to become a startup unicorn. Large organizations like the Red Cross are a valuable and important addition to the community, despite not being a successful tech unicorn. They got a lot of money from In-Q-Tel so they're already kind of taxpayer funded (via CIA) so going outright charity wouldn't be a stretch.

A good business analogy for Docker would be the small day care my kids attended. They were based in a small church building which permanently limited the size of their state license. It doesn't matter if they hire 3 caregivers or 1500, they only have space for an 8 kid license and revenue will never exceed 8 kids. They can hire 1500 caregivers using VC funds but they'll never get more than 8 kids of revenue. They are not working in a field where they can scale to a billion dollars of revenue. There's nothing "wrong" about a daycare that rents a room of a church, employs a couple "early childhood education major" college grads right around minimum wage, and the kids have fun. Thats Docker. There is perhaps a bigger third problem that they probably sold themselves to investors as an unstoppable money printing machine. Whoops. Nobody makes that mistake with the local church daycare. To some extent lack of due diligence is the fault of the investors. We'd never have had docker without their ... selfless financial donation.

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