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Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

theregister.com

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Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#371

Post by nickjj »

zmmmmm wrote: post #370
nickjj wrote: post #283

For everyone who is against this change, can you please write up why? For a ton of small companies (anyone making $10 million or less per year) nothing is going to change and DD is still free to use. If you're at a big organization with let's say 200 developers chances are your company makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Even Docker's most expensive business plan would cost you 200 * $21 = $4,200 month. Pay…

you jumped from $10m revenue to a 200 developer company with payroll of $3m month in your example. There are tiny companies with $10m revenue (remember, revenue isn't margin and certainly isn't profit). A company could easily have non-employment expenses be 90% of its revenue, so we are talking about $1m or 7-8 person company there on decent salaries. A far cry from the 200 devs you give as an example. However as to…

> A company could easily have non-employment expenses be 90% of its revenue, so we are talking about $1m or 7-8 person company there on decent salaries

Can you give a few real world examples where a $10 million / year revenue company with 7 employees would have difficulty paying $147 a month (or $49 if they went for the $7 / month instead)? With the $7 / month plan (if you only care about DD), the entire annual cost for all 7 devs is less than hiring 1 developer for 1 day at a normal US dev salary.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#372

Post by naikrovek »

spooneybarger wrote: post #128
alanwreath wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a trivial thing to run Docker natively inside of a WSL2 environment - at least my attempts to install straight docker strictly inside Ubuntu running in WSL2 always resulted in Ubuntu’s attempts to reach some .exe with regard to Docker. I did learn some fun facts WRT Linux in WSL2 - it doesn’t have systemd installed by default.

I've never had a problem with it. I've been using docker engine in WSL2 for a couple years. I install `docker.io` via apt and its good to go except that package has on some ubuntu versions been missing the /etc/init.d/ startup script. I build my WSL2 environments via Dockerfile. You can see everything here: https://github.com/SeanTAllen/wsl-environments/tree/main/ubu... Using that dockerfile I can then export the fil…

well the installation process seems to have changed in the last 2 years. installing `docker.io` is not enough to get docker running in WSL 2 anymore.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#373

Post by jpambrun »

qeternity wrote: post #130

So many people in this thread don’t understand how enterprise decisions get made. The business license costs $21/month, probably less in reality. Do you really think that businesses are going to jeopardize the workflows of their $250k/year assets over a very core piece of software for $250/year? Any alternative has switching costs and risks. Companies will just pay this. I see so many people saying “just do these 10…

I think you don't understand how big company procurement work. Getting legal's and procurement's attention to look at this is more effort than its worth. The logistics of managing licenses, single sign-on, etc is a nightmare. Besides, running docker is already frowned upon by InfoSec and require special permission. It will never happen where I work. Not because of money, but because it's too much trouble.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#374

Post by dralley »

oplav wrote: post #368
andyroid wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the fact that not all, or even most, dev machines run Linux, which is the only platform podman supports?

I don't use podman, but a quick search shows that you can install podman on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Are you referring to something else? https://podman.io/getting-started/installation

If you read the instructions, they basically say that you still need a Linux VM or WSL environment to run Podman in. Which makes it not a complete replacement for Docker desktop, which handles the VM for you. So OP isn't wrong.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#375

Post by naikrovek »

moogly wrote: post #288
treesknees wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to Docker Desktop on Windows, you can use the Hyper-V backend instead of WSL2. MacOS uses HyperKit API to spin up a Linux VM to run it. There is no native engine for Windows or MacOS. https://docs.docker.com/desktop/windows/install/

Sure, but I've never seen a non-Docker Desktop installer for any of the tools like the CLI, Compose etc., and I can't seem to find one now either.

https://download.docker.com/win/static/stable/x86_64/

Not an installer, and doesn't include docker-compose, but this is what you're talking about, I think.

Only supports Windows containers.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#376

Post by zmmmmm »

nickjj wrote: post #371
zmmmmm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you jumped from $10m revenue to a 200 developer company with payroll of $3m month in your example. There are tiny companies with $10m revenue (remember, revenue isn't margin and certainly isn't profit). A company could easily have non-employment expenses be 90% of its revenue, so we are talking about $1m or 7-8 person company there on decent salaries. A far cry from the 200 devs you give as an example. However as to…

> A company could easily have non-employment expenses be 90% of its revenue, so we are talking about $1m or 7-8 person company there on decent salaries Can you give a few real world examples where a $10 million / year revenue company with 7 employees would have difficulty paying $147 a month (or $49 if they went for the $7 / month instead)? With the $7 / month plan (if you only care about DD), the entire annual cost…

Ok, so you're asking about a different point, now, the difficulty of paying. In that case the difficulties arise because of corporate gatekeepers, licensing stewards and general policies governing software licensing. Typically my organisation would not approve this sort of purchase without a business case and justification - not least because we are a not-for-profit and any money not going to our cause is scrutinised heavily (the thing donors absolutely hate the most is the idea their money doesn't get to the cause they donated to and instead goes into sinkhole of funding commerical company's bottom lines).

Obviously one payment is not too big but as soon as the policy allows one it allows all such things so its effectively opening the gate to all kinds of micro-payments that quickly build up and become entrenched as "essential".

Here's a similar analogy ... does your company pay for your parking? Why not, its small compared to your salary right? and it definitely helps you get to work, be more efficient etc? Well its not just about the parking its because that represents a class of purchase that if allowed would tilt the scale towards a massive number of similar types of expenses. So in fact most places will have blanked policies disallowing small purchases.

Another question: since the price for Docker Desktop already got arbitrarily changed with no notice, why would you believe that it won't go up in the future? Or get more restrictive in other ways? Once a company executes bad faith one time, continued manifestations of that have to be considered as a risk.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#377

Post by kristjansson »

oplav wrote: post #368
andyroid wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the fact that not all, or even most, dev machines run Linux, which is the only platform podman supports?

I don't use podman, but a quick search shows that you can install podman on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Are you referring to something else? https://podman.io/getting-started/installation

> Podman is a tool for running Linux containers. You can do this from a MacOS desktop as long as you have access to a linux box either running inside of a VM on the host, or available via the network. You need to install the remote client and then setup ssh connection information.

Literally the first non-title element in your link. Just because the client is cross-platform doesn't mean the entire solution is turn-key cross-platform.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#378

Post by [deleted] »

xenadu02 wrote: post #343
WhatsName wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you aren't aware, it's easy to explain by that fact that most finance departments are afraid to question your spendings on grounds of looking incompetent. So it's less about 10$ and more about: "I understand what a wireless mouse is and it doesn't look mission critical to me." "No idea what those items on that AWS bill mean, but I'll probably be better off not asking"

If you must exist in this kind of organization use this to your advantage. Get involved in important projects, setup purchase proposals, then make sure you add in new laptops, cables, mice, extra monitors, and whatever other accessories you need. Do you have a remote KVM attached to all 100 servers? Yes. Will finance care if you add 100 monitors, keyboards, mice, etc? Nope. Will your vendor happily add those on to th…

[deleted]

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#379

Post by folmar »

tensor wrote: post #261
TheDong wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the others are also paid on Mac Hyperkit is open source software that works on macOS. https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/drivers/hyperkit/ Virtualbox is also a free (as in beer, and mostly libre) driver that works on all of windows/linux/macOS

Beware of VirtualBox. While part of it is free, it's not very useful without the extension package. This package is easy to download on the same website as VirtualBox, but... it's not free. Even better Oracle tracks the ips that download this extension and after a suitable amount of time they will come knocking on your company's door asking for an insulting amount of money (e.g. more expensive than VMware) or get sue…

I don't know how Macs fare, but on Linux the extension package is not really a great feat, mostly adds RDP and some faster USB modes, but USB passthrough is marginal at most anyway.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#380

Post by Aqueous »

qeternity wrote: post #130

So many people in this thread don’t understand how enterprise decisions get made. The business license costs $21/month, probably less in reality. Do you really think that businesses are going to jeopardize the workflows of their $250k/year assets over a very core piece of software for $250/year? Any alternative has switching costs and risks. Companies will just pay this. I see so many people saying “just do these 10…

$21 / user / month - so if you have 100 engineers that's $2100 a month or $25k a year.

Still should be doable for most businesses that size but licensing costs can blow up when you start to have a lot of seats. An annoying thing about the company I work for is that they have a limited number of licenses for things like IDEs, so they ration them. And so I'll boot up an IDE for a language I work in less - like say, PyCharm - and it will stop working because my license got taken away and given to someone else. I'll have to request another one be given back to get working again, which is pretty annoying when I'm trying to get something done. I work mostly with Docker / Kubernetes so if I'm in a situation where my core tools are being constantly taken away, I'll be pretty miffed.

I agree that Docker has every right to charge big companies for this software. Just wanted to point out that the costs can be more than you'd expect.

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