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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

#411

Post by JanisL »

version_five wrote: post #401
jdwithit wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This poster has clearly worked at the same kind of companies I have. Plenty of them would gladly burn 10x what it would cost to just buy the damn license on engineering man-hours switching something that's inferior but free. Because it doesn't show up as an expense on the annual budget. The concept of opportunity cost is completely lost on a lot of business leaders.

Exactly. I've never understood why capital or cash expense costs are valued so much differently than salary costs. I've had jobs (like any manager) where I have complete leeway on how I "spend" millions of dollars of people's time, but had to to through all kinds of approval to spend even the smallest amount of money.

A lot of it is path dependency whereby various practices turn into processes, regulations and laws. On top of this narratives form that guide peoples thinking as to what the right financial decisions are, then people can start to believe these narratives over time without questioning them. Eventually companies can create certain processes or habits on the basis that those narratives need to be true: https://www.epsilontheory.com/what-do-we-need-to-be-true/

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#412

Post by hda111 »

cebert wrote: post #397
stevebmark wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What companies are offering $250k/year for engineers?

It seems like 200k+ is pretty typical for Engineers with at least some experience even in less hot markets like the Midwest. I know several developers in the Metro Detroit area making more than 200k base.

In Germany this type of experience would be paid 50k. So the license fee will hit be costly here.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#413

Post by hda111 »

Spivak wrote: post #347
vesinisa wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so you're running your app on virtualized Linux inside Docker inside Linux inside Virtualbox inside native MacOS?

That’s how it has to work when there’s a kernel mismatch from host to guest. You’re implying more layers than there actually are. - MacOS running a hypervisor - A Linux VM with Docker installed. - A Linux container running on that VMs kernel. Containers on Linux aren’t virtualized (normally, you could use runV I suppose if you wanted). The only overhead is the extra disk space to extract the root fs of the container…

You can run systemd in podman or LXD containers.

LXC was the first container implementation on Linux and uses full Linux systems similar to a VM.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#414

Post by throwaway2048 »

londons_explore wrote: post #406
cies wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> requires some juggling of licenses with associated turn-around times This! I've always said that a bit reason for FLOSS to win over the internet server-side is because scaling fast and juggling livenses is just too hard. Especially with the prying eyes of Oracle/MSFT/etc's powerful legal teams and hidden "phone home" code. Going with a LAMP stack was just to simplest way to keep moving at speed.

What would have happened if Microsoft had put some clause in volume licenses that said "you can use a system unlicensed for up to 30 days before paying for a license". Then engineering can spin up loads of instances to test stuff and scale fast with minimal hassle, and it'll be the purchasing team playing catchup later, no longer in the decisionmaking path.

that trick might work once or twice, until a hard policy comes into effect after the company gets burned.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#415

Post by JanisL »

staticassertion wrote: post #317
namdnay wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s assuming some kind soul in engineering management has the patience and leverage to guide this through 10 layers of purchasing, procurement, finance, legal etc… Another likely outcome is that it’s “easier” for teams to switch to another tool (easier in that at least they’re not waiting on a third party for approval) and everyone loses a lot of time Big corporations are not the most efficient beasts for this kin…

I really doubt that procurement is going to be harder than switching a technology out.

Entirely depends on the organization, I used to think this too but then I encountered some organizations (granted ones with entirely dysfunctional procurement processes) where switching technologies was easier and less risky to schedules than going down the procurement process. The risk of missing deadlines and blowing out schedules is the factor that tends to be on people's minds when procurement is brutally slow.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#416

Post by throwaway2048 »

version_five wrote: post #401
jdwithit wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This poster has clearly worked at the same kind of companies I have. Plenty of them would gladly burn 10x what it would cost to just buy the damn license on engineering man-hours switching something that's inferior but free. Because it doesn't show up as an expense on the annual budget. The concept of opportunity cost is completely lost on a lot of business leaders.

Exactly. I've never understood why capital or cash expense costs are valued so much differently than salary costs. I've had jobs (like any manager) where I have complete leeway on how I "spend" millions of dollars of people's time, but had to to through all kinds of approval to spend even the smallest amount of money.

graft is a serious issue with purchase orders, its much less of an issue with salaries.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#417

Post by danudey »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #215
namdnay wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s assuming some kind soul in engineering management has the patience and leverage to guide this through 10 layers of purchasing, procurement, finance, legal etc… Another likely outcome is that it’s “easier” for teams to switch to another tool (easier in that at least they’re not waiting on a third party for approval) and everyone loses a lot of time Big corporations are not the most efficient beasts for this kin…

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies where engineers were trusted to make small purchasing decisions. It works well for a while, but eventually everyone accumulates a lot of random recurring charges and the company cracks down. $21 is nothing for a one-time spend. $21 per month per employee is now $252/year per employee, but now you also need someone managing all of these licenses and accounting. Every new…

Our company has a lot of processes that could be streamlined via containerization of build and development environments, across Windows, Mac, and Linux.

But arguing for $252/yr times a thousand developers (in the office I work in, at least; we have others elsewhere) is just untenable. If the value was there for us, then we could get it signed off on, but there's no way to build that value because now it's too expensive to get started.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#418

Post by hda111 »

rcarmo wrote: post #40
dpratt wrote: post #33

This appears to be cutting of their nose to spite their face. We have a team of 50+ engineers that all use Docker for Mac for daily development tasks, but I suspect that will no longer be true in a rather short amount of time. Frankly, I don’t really know if anybody actually uses the UI components for it outside of starting and stopping the engine and for basic configuration of the VM. Everything else that comes with…

For the Mac, just get Canonical’s Multipass ( http://multipass.run ) and do an apt-get to install Docker into a VM and use VS Code to “remote” to it. It will automatically install the Docker extension inside the Linux VM and you’re set. For Windows, use WSL2 and do the same. Both can mount “local” folders, although the setup is obviously different. You now have a better way to manage containers than ever before.

This is the best solution. Multipass is also great software.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#420

Post by danudey »

jeremyjh wrote: post #257
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies where engineers were trusted to make small purchasing decisions. It works well for a while, but eventually everyone accumulates a lot of random recurring charges and the company cracks down. $21 is nothing for a one-time spend. $21 per month per employee is now $252/year per employee, but now you also need someone managing all of these licenses and accounting. Every new…

Fixing this has to be a great business opportunity. Surely someone is already working on it?

A simple local k8s installation with a simple but effective GUI on top, running containerd instead of docker and with a CLI wrapper for docker commands, would be more than enough for everything I need.
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