To give a sense of time: Docker launched in 2013, but it was one of many iterations of the same project, which I had been working on continuously since 2008. Over those 5 years, virtually nobody cared or understood what the hell I was working on. I lived in France and had no connection to the tech industry.
So, not only did I not anticipate this kind of success, I did not even have a reference frame for what success might even look like. All I knew was, I had an itch that I had to scratch, and I had nothing better to do :)
In those years in the systems group I was working in at a fortune 500, we were very interested in this type of technology. Mostly using Solaris Zones and cgroups and trying to do this ourselves with limited results.
When Docker came out it solved so many issues we were having. Thank you for scratching that itch.
Was it always called Docker? Do you think the branding played a larger role in success than you would have expected?
I remember in 2013 the first time someone showed me Docker [im in Mexico]. My first thought is that we already had Vagrant for setting up and running virtual machines through console.
I didnt get it at that time haha.