alt Hacker NewsOne 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 sort of “gotcha” scheme where if we were running the version of Docker Desktop after the commercial licensing requirement change, they sent a 30 day notice to license the product or they’d sue. Due to the usual “mid size software company not micromanaging the developers” standard, we had a few people on a new enough version that it would trigger the new license terms and we were in violation. They didn’t seem to do much outreach other than threatening us.
So in each case we switched to Rancher Desktop.
The licensing cost wasn’t that high, but it was hard to take them in good faith after their approach.
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> if we were running the version of Docker Desktop after the commercial licensing requirement change, they sent a 30 day notice to license the product or they’d sue.
What exactly are you objecting to? Since you say “I’m fine with the idea that licensing Docker and Docker Desktop is a good thing to do” it’s not the change, so what is it? The 30 days, them saying they would sue after that, or the tone?
I haven’t seen the messages so I cannot comment on that, but if you accept that the licensing can be changed, whats wrong with writing offenders to remind them to either stop using the product or start paying? And what’s wrong with giving them 30 days, since, in my memory, they announced the licensing change months in advance?
So they have become Oracle...
They basically made the case for podman existing, and I see podman gaining steam and being easier and easier to drop in as a replacement for Docker.
If they never changed that licensing, nobody would have had an incentive to put big effort into an alternative.
I think the hosted Docker registry should have been their first revenue source and then they should have created more closed source enterprise workflow solutions and hosted services that complement the docker tooling that remained truly open source, including desktop.
Due to the usual “mid size software company not micromanaging the developers”
standard
> they sent a 30 day notice to license the product or they’d sue
This tracks with what I saw, one day there was an email sent out to make sure you don’t have docker desktop installed.
It was wild because we were on the heels of containerize-all-th-things push and now we’re winding down docker?? Sure whatever you say boss.