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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

#501

Post by wreath »

gfosco wrote: post #482
wahern wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

As someone who went from the PA suburbs and small IT shops (where 75k was a premium salary) to the SF startup scene and Facebook, one of the observations that has stuck with me was the incredible cheapness of my wealthy tech peers. It's hard to explain unless you've been around people who do a whole lot more with a whole lot less.

I noticed this exact same thing in my ex-FAANG colleagues. No judgment, just an observation.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#502

Post by [deleted] »

wahern wrote: post #460
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…

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

[deleted]

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#503

Post by tempodox »

Spooky23 wrote: post #468
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…

Absolutely. The pricing model for this is really stupid. A $21/mo subscription is a pain in the ass — they would be better off just selling it perpetual for $1000. I ran a big enterprise shop for years. Nuisance licensing like this costs a fortune - I’d need to go do legal review, have it tracked for renewals and compliance, etc. Freemium product like this is always coupled with a stupid license enforcement audit tha…

I love the term “nuisance licensing”. Considering how everyone and their grandmother is switching to subscription models I wonder why it didn't come up earlier.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#504

Post by antupis »

strken wrote: post #477
wahern wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone making $250k/year shouldn't think twice dropping $21/month on a tool that truly makes them more productive. A year or two ago I bought a personal license to Ubuntu FIPS after being urgently asked to debug an issue w/ Python's OpenSSL bindings. Unsurprisingly it turned out that my company had an enterprise license, and had I known whom to contact (which I didn't), I could have gotten a license key in a couple…

It's not about $x a month, it's about the friction of dropping any money at all. It could be 10c/year and still annoy everyone, because now they have to go through a procurement process, find someone with a company credit card, wrangle with reimbursement forms, etc. Docker arguably should be charging more for it. The friction between $0 and $21/month is higher than the friction between $21/month and $60/month in a lo…

This 1000x developers are lazy and generally don't want go throug bureaucratic hassle. Long run this just going to hurt docker when developers start using podman or some other free alternative.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#505

Post by gjs278 »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #121

Docker have never done the one obvious thing to monetise - an upsell and enterprise support for the engine. Trying to be a poor mans pivotal was a stupid strategy, and developer tools is awkward too. I’m convinced if they charged $10 per engine per month they would have kept all of the goodwill and momentum and been the next VMWare.

vmware is the next cobol. nobody under 50 is going to use that shit.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#506

Post by lmilcin »

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…

You are using logic.

That's not how corporations work.

I work remotely for large corporation (over 100k employees) and it wastes on average an hour of my productivity every day on stupid stuff. For example my office PC becomes unavailable every time it gets an update, at least once a week. They force restart during working hours. If there is somebody in the office I can call them to reboot it, if not I have to drive there. Everybody has the same problem. Meetings are disrupted, plans are thrown in disarray, people are loosing sometimes entire day of work.

The problem has been known before covid and has not been solved.

Any normal logical person would throw resources into solving the problem, but the people responsible just say they are busy and why is that a big problem if you can just press reboot?

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#507

Post by chrisandchris »

yarcob wrote: post #216
chrisandchris wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that you currently don‘t need any other than the functionality the free plan provides, and assuming all 50 engineers need a license, your „a few hundred dollars“ is actually $1‘250/month just for getting the same as before. I understand (in some way) the decision Docker made but I am not sure it is the way-to-go. However, it is a very hard question and if I had to pay a monthly fee for each component I‘m usi…

That 50 people team probably costs at least 250000/month. Are you going to take away a tool that everyone on the team needs to save 1250? Or put another way, how much time would you need to replicate what Docker offers for a team of 50 people? If it takes more than 25% of the time of a single employee, then Docker is cheaper (assuming your employee costs $5000 a month, which I guess is a lower bound for an engineer).

No, I am not (that was also not my point basically). My point is that you are going to pay for a) something you got for free (as in beer) before and b) something you don‘t (maybe) need/want.

I think it is a very valid question how to monetize Docker (and all the other libraries we are using for free), but I am personally not sure that subscriptions to everything are the solution.

I am sure that this expense should not get into your way if you have 50+ engineers, however if you think that with all expenses…

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#508

Post by martin-adams »

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 once got told my my manager to reduce the cost of my email inbox on the server and download it to my local machine.

This was email provided and owned by the very company I worked for, and it was costing enough for management to care.

Maybe enterprises have changed since then, but I wouldn’t be surprised if stuff like this does start asking questions as it’s a new cost on a budget.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#509

Post by speedgoose »

make3 wrote: post #249
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…

21$/month/user is nothing for the business setting.

Between getting that approved and paid by the company or just using another tool, I will use another tool.

Re: Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

#510

Post by boudin »

kristjansson wrote: post #377
oplav wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's exactly what docker desktop does as well. A Macos or Windows client that runs docker in a Linux VM. There is a really limited concept of container on Windows, but it's far from being great and since not much people use Windows in production to run apps, this is not really usefull.
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