14 ms·

We apologize. We did a terrible job announcing the end of Docker Free Teams

592 points by mmbleh 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tofuahdude 4y ago
Given the number of times that Docker the company has rugged the community, I am highly pessimistic of their organization / paying them. I'd rather run my own registry.
PhysicalNomad 4y ago
I stopped using Docker entirely after the Moby mess, when Podman came around without needing a daemon, and better runtimes became available for Kubernetes. It's been the inferior product for a long time, only kept alive by the dev mindshare they gained early on.
- oofbey 4y ago
  It's synonymous with "containers" for a lot of people. I know a lot of groups that use docker to build containers and other infra to run them. Too bad the company screwed up turning their technology into a real business, or taking a graceful massive exit when they had the chance. Their VC's doubtless pushed them towards an IPO when they didn't really have a solid revenue plan. Once they started nagging / forcing / tricking people into paying for what they had offered for free, they company was doomed. The "+WASM" branding all over their website reeks the sad desperation of a has-been coulda-been. Sorry folks, you built cool and important technology, but that's not good enough if you're greedy.
markus_zhang 4y ago
I'm a bit surprised that they are struggle to make $$ with such a popular tool. But I could be wrong.
sasakrsmanovic2 4y ago
Good job on docker to come clean so quickly.
- eatonphil 4y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call this "coming clean" since it doesn't seem like they really changed anything. They just apologized for that what they are doing is upsetting people.
mellowyeller 4y ago
The third sentence in their apology is "This impacted less than 2% of our users." What is that supposed to convey? It feels like a handwave. 'We're sorry we mistreated you, look how small you are to us.'
- slantedview 4y ago
  The "2% of our users" is indeed misleading since most users don't run organizations, and it's mainly orgs that were affected. A better metric would be what % of orgs were impacted.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  The 2% they’re referring to are businesses that are using Docker’s hosted services for free. The majority of the outrage was from people thinking about the non-business users, that is, open source projects, which Docker unintentionally implied would be impacted by this change. Docker are apologising for their poor communication which made people think this change applied to more than just a tiny portion of the user base (who are probably happy to pay). They’re not apologising for the change.
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    > Less than 2% of Docker users have a Free Team organization on their account. I don't think so. The quote above is what they say on that page, and I think that is a pretty useless metric. It affects 2% of all Docker Hub users, 100% of all Free Team users.
  - lozenge 4y ago
    Anybody who uses "docker pull" or "FROM" and not pointing at their own hosting or their own paid Docker account was affected as evidenced by the thousands of comments worried about the impact.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4y ago
threeseed 4y ago
Not sure how this changes anything. Their open source program [1] only grants a free 1-year Docker Team subscription. After which time the whole system is unusable. And most of those features aren't what open source teams even need which is surely just basic multi-user access. They really should have just tightened the entry criteria for their open source offering if they were so concerned about it being misused. https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-program-has-a-new-look/ https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-pro...
- mikesir87 4y ago
  (Docker DevRel team here) For clarification, the program grants one year of access, but is indefinitely renewable as long as the program is still compliant with current criteria.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Thank you for the clarification. For reference, are there any open source projects you've seen that suddenly change course to being paid products and would lose open source status according to Docker? Any Linux distros that suddenly went closed source? Are there any sort of general public licenses that might preclude projects from even doing so?
    - elkos 4y ago
      Say a distro sells laptops with the distro pre-installed while also providing the same image online and might also sell consulting services to companies utilizing the distro. According to my undestanding of the terms of Docker's opend source program, even if said distro was fully open-source and a run by a non-profit they would be non-eligible to participate in the program.
  - mplanchard 4y ago
    Is this renewal automatic? Having to go recertify with docker once a year for my tiny open source project that we happen to have an image for is literally infinity percent more hassle than I would like to deal with.
ericb 4y ago
If they are listening to feedback, first is that a 30 day timeframe sends the message that "we feel our profit is more important than whatever else you are working on, so much that you should either pay us, or if you cannot afford it, immediately halt your other activities to reduce our costs." None of that builds trust. As someone affected, I'm ok with paying. * I don't like feeling tricked * I don't like feeling held hostage * Make your changes in a manner that preceding the announcement with "SURPRISE!" wouldn't be fitting This was done with no notice--basically a bill for RIGHT NOW with no warning, and it seems that the only reason for that was greed? Docker just hit 100 million in ARR. I mean, really, you can't afford to role this out gracefully?!?
- throitallaway 4y ago
  Docker Hub has become deeply integrated into the workflow of development/pipelines/runtime environments/etc. Announcing something like this with 30 days notice is extremely insulting. They're a software company (maybe not...?) and should be well aware of the amount of interruption that a 30 day notice on something like this causes.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  I can assure you that Docker is not trying to protect any profits. More like... slow the cash hemorrhage.
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    how can you "assure" that?
  - ericb 4y ago
    Docker is over 100 million ARR from what I understand, so that's a strange thing to say.
    - jzb 4y ago
      But what’s their debt and running costs?
bovermyer 4y ago
I already moved my relevant containers to GHCR. Side note - Google's "crane" CLI tool was marvelous for this purpose.
Macha 4y ago
> What are the benefits of a paid Docker subscription? > Docker Pro is ideal for individual developers looking to accelerate productivity. > Docker Team is ideal for small teams looking to collaborate productively. > Docker Business is ideal for businesses looking for centralized management and advanced security capabilities. Visit our pricing page to learn more. I'm not quite sure that answers the question, just how docker would like it's customers to self-discriminate.
WWLink 4y ago
Ah, good ole Docker. When they did the "it's not free anymore" rugpull on Docker Desktop, I couldn't use it at work anymore since they wouldn't invoice us for less than a 50 seat license. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses won't buy things without invoicing for legal reasons. It really upset me because I had a pretty solid workflow with docker desktop on a mac. Now I can't use that anymore. I am not surprised they continue to make foolish moves trying to monetize their software. I get it, you need to monetize your software... but this is dumb.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  What's the workflow? What more is Docker Desktop than a way to get the Docker CLI on non-Linux machines?
- pnw 4y ago
  I get invoices for my $5 Pro plan. Do you mean they wouldn't take the order on credit?
  - InvaderFizz 4y ago
    Probably means they would not do NET30 or the like terms to fit with their corporate purchasing workflow.
    - pnw 4y ago
      Pretty hard to get NET30 invoicing on a transaction which is less than $450, especially if you've chosen the monthly plan. It's just not worth the labor chasing an unpaid $450 invoice every damn month.
      - xen2xen1 4y ago
        Isn't that what resellers are for?
  - Volundr 4y ago
    I assume they mean Docker issues an invoice which the company's AP department can then pay by either cutting a check or ACH transfer. At least that's what we had to get all our vendors to start doing when the company I worked for killed off corporate cards and quit letting employees expense things like this.
mig39 4y ago
We're sorry there was a backlash.
- jaimex2 4y ago
  Needs South Park gifs.
system16 4y ago
It's almost becoming a cliche for companies to release damage control follow-ups like this after they pull a bait and switch. It's always "we're sorry that we didn't communicate our bait and switch effectively". Not we're sorry that we pulled a bait and switch. We're sorry you didn't understand the value in this bait and switch. It's your fault, actually. But we're sorry you're angry. Now stop giving us negative attention.
- jeron 4y ago
  Ah, but there’s no such thing as negative press. Look how many people are talking about Docker now!!
  - irrational 4y ago
    On our team we are mainly talking about how will we divest of Docker.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    > No such thing as negative press Tell that to Silicon Valley Bank after that WSJ article that started the run lol
- AbraKdabra 4y ago
  We're deeply sorry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4.
- dheera 4y ago
  The forces of capitalism reward this, it will continue to happen as long as we pick pure capitalism as a system, and keep assigning values to companies purely on financials with no consideration toward their ability to empathize and communicate.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    There's no such thing as "pure capitalism" – not if you're talking about things that exist. In an ideal free market with perfectly-rational omniscient actors, this issue wouldn't occur. I don't think you even need the omniscience: trust, memory, reputation/vouching and basic game theory should be sufficient (though I haven't proven this). Alternatively: a free market with contracts, where all things go through the system, would work. In the real world, the system consists of people, each of whom is optimising for a particular thing. Very few people are optimising for "make the most money, at the expense of all else". Show me anyone (even a billionaire), and I'll show you somebody who values other things higher than the accumulation of money. And plenty of things don't go through "the system of capitalism": we have commons, and volunteers, and favours, and coerced unpaid labour / wage theft. "The forces of capitalism" might be a good shorthand for the reasons behind this problem, but it's not strictly an accurate one: these issues aren't inherent to capitalism. They're not problems with capitalism, but problems with this system. (Capitalism does have other, different problems that are pretty baked in, like how capital is power and power lets you accrue capital, but I don't see how that relates to this issue.)
eyeareque 4y ago
I’m guessing they did this change because the cost of giving a free service isn’t cheap for docker?
- ericb 4y ago
  It seems the concept of a loss leader is "lost" on Docker. Some MBA with a spreadsheet at Docker hasn't realized that where the upstream OSS goes, the rest follow.
  - sleepybrett 4y ago
    Loss leader for products that don't sell? The change to a full open source toolchain for their core products was more or less painless.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    They've historically had trouble having that loss leader lead to a non-loss.
    - ericb 4y ago
      A lot of folks have missed the updates--they are now past 100 million in annual recurring revenue--that history has evolved.
  - nstart 4y ago
    I have no idea about their internals but I’m curious how many people used docker’ own registry offering as their repo manager of choice because it’s configured to lookup the docker registry by default. Easier to setup pipelines and dev env workflows etc. If this move means that people have to now manage access to multiple registries like quay and ghcr, will that also incentivize people to go ahead and try migrating to these other registries. Especially given that dockers own registry has such poor permission management.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  The problem runs much deeper than that. Most of what Docker offers is commodity software. You can get docker image hosting from a variety of sources and hosting your own registry isn't that hard. All you need is a docker container and some file storage or bucket. Docker for desktop is nice but there are free alternatives. Docker registries are included with most cloud services (AWS, Azure, Gcloud, digital ocean) and you can use those to self host as well without too much issues. Github and gitlab offer docker registries as well. As do lots of other companies. Mostly, those services make money from other things than hosting docker images. That's just a low value commodity that they need to offer the really interesting stuff. If you are going to charge people for some expensive kubernetes cluster, they need a place to dump their container images. So you offer that for free. It's just a few GB of storage. It literally is a rounding error on the total bill. It does not matter. Charging for that does not make sense. That's the problem docker has right now: they need companies to pay them absurd amounts of money for something that is essentially a low value commodity and they don't really have anything with a lot of value that they could charge for instead. And the harder they insist people need to pay, the more they erode their position as a leader in this space (which arguably they lost years ago). While it was free and convenient, people used them. But now that that's no longer the case, people engineer around them. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The one asset they still had (people treating them as the de-facto place to park docker containers) is basically being lost. And as soon as that stops, it's going to get harder for them to gain new customers or even retain existing ones. Contrast that with Github that used to charge for stuff that they now give away for free. I paid for it back in the day. And now I don't. Except Github is making loads of money from companies that outgrow the freemium tier. And they have a steady supply of happy freemium users using their services for free transitioning to valuable paid services. And they get to host the entirety (well close to it) of the software developer population on this planet. It's the largest professional network outside of linkedin. Which of course MS also owns. It would be madness to incentivize users to not use that by charging for it. It's way too valuable for that. Speaking of MS, they should just buy out Docker. Fire the management. Get rid of their sales department and revitalize docker and dockerhub development and integrate it into github. It's so complementary to Github that it's a no-brainer. And probably investors are getting fed up with the way things are going at docker. I imagine this could be a relatively cheap acquisition for them. This isn't OpenAI, LinkedIn, or Github.
lozenge 4y ago
Not much has changed then. If you don't meet the strict criteria of the Open Source Program, for example you are a for profit company publishing an open source image, you can't upload new versions of your public images. Your images are one CVE away from becoming useless. If you do meet the criteria, they will build images for you. No way to have your own build process. All artifacts are made public.
computronus 4y ago
Reading carefully about image deletion: * "public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them" * "Public images will only disappear if the maintainer of the image decides to proactively delete it from Docker Hub. If the maintainer takes no action, we will continue to distribute their public images." This sounds good, but it would be better to explicitly say "if you opt to let your free organization be suspended, Docker Hub will continue distributing your public images indefinitely anyway". It feels like there's a loophole here where if a public image comes to have no maintainer - because they abandoned its organization - then it no longer benefits from this assurance. That seems unlikely, but given how this change has been going so far, it's tough to give Docker the benefit of the doubt.
- grrowl 4y ago
  Would be worried that the old images will still be distributed, but if an open source maintainer needed to push an update (e.g. for security reasons) they'd need to sign up to the paid account
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chillbill 4y ago
What I’d like to know is why the hell is there so many Docker editions/licenses? Did docker just hire people who made Windows vista? Also, just switch to Podman already people…
- antoineMoPa 4y ago
  Doesn't podman use docker.io images by default?
franky47 4y ago
> You can migrate to a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed. Support request sent, I wish there were more clear on what "Topic" and "Severity" this kind of request falls into. #HugOps to the tech support team that's going to be flooded with requests.
mkl95 4y ago
> You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed. This company raised $400M+ and they cannot be arsed to implement a feature to change account types.
hectormalot 4y ago
Compared to the recent apology from Fly.io [1], Docker's corporate apology is terrible. Fly's was open about the struggles they faced and how they feel about it, empathetic to their customers, and come across as genuine (also reinforced by mrkurt's active follow up both in their community, as wel as here on HN). Docker's on the other hand is none of that, and full of corporate PR red flags: - "This only impacted less than 2% of our users" signals that they're not really sorry. It tells me they see this as a 'loud minority' problem - "This does not affect [list of 6 other types of subscriptions]" -> signals the post is partially being used to promote the other subscriptions. Reinforced by the "what are the benefits of a Docker subscription" at the bottom. - It's still unclear (to me) what is the actual implication for some of the non-official open source projects here. On the one hand they say: "Public images will only disappear if the maintainer decides to proactively delete it from Docker Hub". Further down they mention "we will defer any organization suspension or deletion while the DSOS application is under review". Clearly they do intent to suspend organisations, but maybe let old images remain? Then the problem remains, as it prevents future updates. Despite what it tries to say in words, (for me) this post just reinforces the initial signal of both not understanding and not caring about the open source usage. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516
- MBCook 4y ago
  > It tells me they see this as a 'loud minority' problem I don’t think that’s what it is. I think it’s minimizing. Don’t worry, it’s only 2%. The problem is that’s 2% directly. If my organization has a Docker license, we’re not effected because we’re commercial. But that’s not true is it? If we use Docker there is a very good chance that we use or base some of our images on open source images. We’re effected indirectly. I admit it’s probably not possible to measure, maybe even estimate. But the total number of organizations this change will be a problem for us way more than 2%. And they don’t want to admit it.
siva7 4y ago
I'm baffled who the heck wrote and approved such a poor communication piece with the original mail
dawnerd 4y ago
So if it's only such a small amount of accounts, then surely it's barely a line item. Makes no sense, something doesn't add up here.
- giaour 4y ago
  I would guess that those 2% of users account for more than 2% of the load on Docker Hub. Open source projects on a regular release cadence would push images more frequently than your average user, and those public images from the projects themselves were probably used in FROM statements more frequently than other images.
  - dawnerd 4y ago
    Obviously but they should use that metric of resources used vs how small the impact is.
    - giaour 4y ago
      I think they used one metric (resources used) when deciding to kill free teams, then their PR team scrambled to find another metric to make the whole kerfuffle seem like a tempest in a teapot when the backlash hit.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Sure. But what share of their users use those 2% images. Surely way more. Also I don't think Docker grasps how much their users value a one way stop for pulling images of OSS. It is a really stupid move.
tananaev 4y ago
The key part for our project is "You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket." Migrating to a free personal account will work for many small open source projects. That's what we're planning to do.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
I have nothing against Docker Inc. But it's worth noting that this kind of screw up happens when your company, from the top down, does not practice a culture in which empathy/compassion for people comes first. In all areas of the business, everyone should first be thinking, how does this impact the people using this thing? Have I talked to them? Do they understand what's happening? Do they have concerns? Have I fully addressed them? Is this going to make their lives harder, or will this be scary, or confusing? It's my biggest pet peeve. Both as a user and an employee. If you don't take the time to care, it's really obvious, and an easy way to piss people off and inconvenience them. From a business perspective that drives customers to your competitors and makes employees quit. From a personal perspective, it's just a dick thing to do.
avereveard 4y ago
Can't they just idk release a list of the images that are likely to be impacted unless the owner takes action? I don't care much of the business decision, it's their house. I care for the persons I support whom use docker and I dont see a way to prepare them without sounding like a crackpot and looking like a fool if they after making noise turns out they aren't impacted.
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
Two solutions that don't seem to be mentioned: 1. Let any user have how many "free teams" they want, but restrict the image size (under 1GB?) and/or downloads (under 1,000/month?). Maybe let the community vote for open source images exempt from this restriction. 2. Run a free link redirect service: user registers my-team on hub.docker.com, links my-team/my-image with their preferred registry my-registry.com, client-side docker pull my-team/my-image resolves automagically to my-registry.com/my-team/my-image.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  3. Let paying teams sponsor free teams. Maybe allow multiple organizations to sponsor a single team. (The free team should be able to refuse sponsorship on a case by case basis)
sleepybrett 4y ago
Faq does not include the most asked question: "Why the fuck are you still so bad at this?"
- mikesir87 4y ago
  (from the Docker DevRel team) Ha! Just had to say... this gave me a good laugh! We're trying to get better... I swear! Comms are hard. We'll get there.
  - 3np 4y ago
    Appreciate it. I'd advise to try hard to not be dismissive of even the more snide and flamey comments in this thread - their interpretations are valid from what I see posted so far.
jacooper 4y ago
GHCR goes brrrrrrrrrr...... Also quay.io is free for public repos.
nielsole 4y ago
Previous communication: > If you don't upgrade to a paid subscription, Docker will retain your organization data for 30 days, after which it will be subject to deletion. During that period you will maintain access to any of your public images. New communication: > We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them. We’re sorry that our initial communications failed to make this clear. Given these statements directly contradict each other I am a bit surprised this is called clarification. It feels like they changed the actual strategy, not just the communication around it.
- eternalban 4y ago
  That depends on what "organization data" means. Does that phrasing cover the images or just the existence of the organization in Docker (i.e. deleted organization)?
  - gpm 4y ago
    > During that period you will maintain access to any of your public images. Pretty unambiguously means "after that period you may not have access to any of your public images".
    - eternalban 4y ago
      Isn't that like a service like Github saying 'you will maintain access to any of your public projects' as in administrative access to one's own projects. After that period, you are no longer the owner of that repo and you no longer have "access". So I can still clone your github project but alas you no longer can commit to it. https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/orgs/ https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/orgs/ https://hub.docker.com/orgs https://hub.docker.com/orgs
      - wholinator2 4y ago
        Doesn't sound like it to me. If they meant "administrative access" they should have said "administrative access". They didn't, they just said "access" which unambiguously means just "access". Would've been very easy for them to make a one word correction somewhere in the dozen or so people who should have read this before it went out. But they didn't, they just said "access". If they wanted unambiguous meaning, they could have easily just said what they meant. Methinks that's exactly what they did
gardenhedge 4y ago
"We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them." Was HN spreading fake news then?
- willdr 4y ago
  Honestly, not removing them but putting them in a readonly state is worse than removing them.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> How can I see if I’m affected? > Please consult the Organizations page of your Docker account; any affected organizations are labeled “Docker Free Team” in the “Subscription” column. Less than 2% of Docker users have a Free Team organization on their account. Interesting theory, but no; my account is paid, but I'm using third party images that are rather harder to verify.
ryan29 4y ago
Edit: It looks like you can migrate from a team to a personal account: > You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed.
- imron 4y ago
  > I don't get it. It's still exactly the same problem for me. So you do get it then. Sorry, not sorry.
ignoramous 4y ago
> ...we recently emailed accounts that are members of Free Team organizations, to let them know that they will lose features unless they move to one of our supported free or paid offerings. This impacted less than 2% of our users. What percentage of those orgs / users hosted popular docker images? Surely, 2% is a small enough number to warrant a public apology?
- klooney 4y ago
  Plus, this isn't 2% of the random people who have created an account since 2013, it's the images that everyone freeloads off of.
linuxftw 4y ago
Lots of people outraged here, but did any organization step up to fill this (perceived) gap? Docker is way too generous IMO. Petabytes of freeloader data they'll never generate a nickle from. Everyone around here wants people to pay $20/month for some newspaper, and spend $0/month on infrastructure that helps run the internet. It's crazy town.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > Lots of people outraged here, but did any organization step up to fill this (perceived) gap? Well, quay already exists. > Everyone around here wants people to pay $20/month for some newspaper, and spend $0/month on infrastructure that helps run the internet. And you believe that those 2 ideas are both held by the same people?
  - linuxftw 4y ago
    I'm aware of Quay, I don't know the exact features that are going away, perceived or otherwise, from Docker that I can say this would fit everyone's usecase. > And you believe that those 2 ideas are both held by the same people? If I had to generalize the audience here, yes.
renewiltord 4y ago
Cool. I'm just glad I don't have to replicate all these images to my own ECR.
r00fus 4y ago
They say that their separate "open source program" (DSOS) is completely better than Free Teams. Why didn't they just migrate everyone on Free Teams to DSOS and then worry about the qualifications for those migrated afterwards (and less stringently)?
- evrflx 4y ago
  And why don't they answer for nearly a year after submitting a request, only to THEN ask to resubmit the request with an improved form or something. After which everything goes back to silence?
slantedview 4y ago
This isn't a good clarification. While Docker says they will not delete images, it doesn't clarify whether they will delete organizations. Indeed, under "Can someone else squat my namespace?", it says "if your organization is suspended, deleted, or you choose to leave Docker voluntarily", which implies that orgs may also be deleted involuntarily. This is still a problem.
maerF0x0 4y ago
Only fair that this also gets 1500 points and front page
kundi 4y ago
What if the 0.1% of the users are the ones that you should deeply care for?
wkdneidbwf 4y ago
oh glorious docker thank you for completely changing course and not deleting our data and then acting like you never said you’d delete it in the first place. fuck docker!
voytec 4y ago
> This impacted less than 2% of our users. Ah, only 2%. Completely irrelevant number. Move along.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  It baffles me that, for such small quantities, they don't just "grandfather" existing users and only change conditions for new signups. The insignificant problem would sort itself out in time, instead of creating a lot of friction and a plume of dumpster fire smoke, for very little or no gain at all.
  - voytec 4y ago
    The percentage of users used in this corpo-speak may likely be counted against active and inactive accounts and almost certainly is not equal to percentage of transfer costs.
patientplatypus 4y ago
[flagged]
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317 - March 2023 (727 comments) Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025 - March 2023 (105 comments) Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949 - March 2023 (12 comments) Also: Elixir: Docker now charges open source orgs $300 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579 - March 2023 (38 comments) Ask HN: Docker Alternatives? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491 - March 2023 (5 comments)
Aleklart 4y ago
I don’t get the hate of Docker as a company. Yes, this is crap technology that incentivise resource inefficiency at its peak form, but this is how stacks like ruby or python are at least working. Still, docker org invented all the tools, gave them for free, promote, document and support them, gave free global registry that can be filled by anyone and contains petabytes of trash, with free thousands of terabytes of egress monthly. They gave away all their intellectual work to RedHat/bazaar and participate in development of “open standards” for free. And now when they take away some expensive toy, developers became hostile and call them unreliable.
- sgammon 4y ago
  i think the hate comes from them squandering a position of their magnitude, built upon the investment and trust of the open source ecosystem. github set a precedent with free public repos, but they traded the cost of supporting that for being the canonical way to store source code online (or as close to it as one company can get). docker accesses this privilege but then demands that open source people, who are by definition not paid for their work directly, must pay to host images on their branded platform, the one which guarantees them a place in the technology hall of fame. the double-punch of that failed remunerative trade ends up feeling to that community like a betrayal; not to mention the self-defeating strategy it embodies, since a technical solution here is not only possible, but would be expected from a company granted that position and privilege in the software supply chain (technical aptitude / excellence). at worst it is a betrayal, at best it comes across as lazy, because they are not reaching for a technical solution which can satisfy every constraint; they are satisfied launching one that merely satisfies their own needs, to the detriment of the community that supported them.
- sgammon 4y ago
  i love Docker, but i think people by and large forget that OCI images are a thing, and that ultimately we are talking about slightly complex tarballs here. i do think Docker is squandering an insanely privileged position here, even if i'm not particularly invested/dogmatic personally about Docker as a brand. only every so often does a company become a member of the popular lexicon -- an Uber instead of a Taxi, a Kleenex instead of a tissue -- we pull Docker images every day even though they are actually OCI images, or hosted on GitHub. this privilege is insanely huge and it is one granted through technical aptitude, intense problem solving, commitment to open source and tooling, and so on, that the Docker project displayed for its first two decades or so of existence. where it fell off that wagon as a brand, and misaligned with its technology, i don't know. this is just one person's 2c.
jdlyga 4y ago
Monetizing what we took for granted as available for free has really rubbed everyone the wrong way. I've noticed teams are much less likely to request paid Docker Desktop, especially since there are perfectly suitable free alternatives nowadays. We all use either native docker engine on Windows + WSL2, or the MIT licensed Colima on Mac. Honestly, Docker Desktop was always a fairly heavyweight and cumbersome app with a very high opinion of itself.
xbar 4y ago
Who is docker for now?
sys_64738 4y ago
Stupid is as Stupid does.
solarkraft 4y ago
It's cool that you're not completely deaf, but the damage has been done and not only due to this announcement. There are alternatives and people are increasingly choosing them.
manifoldgeo 4y ago
> This impacted less than 2% of our users. I think they mean it impacts less than 2% of user _accounts_. Not every account is created equal. If you were an open-source org with millions of image downloads a month, having your org deleted would have an outsized effect on the community. Many more Docker Hub users than 2% stand to be affected by these changes, even if the nominal value of 2% of user accounts is accurate. Also, this "apology" does not feel even 2% apologetic. "I am sorry you misunderstood us" is not an apology. They're running the seldom used "docker pull gaslight:latest" command.
- technick 4y ago
  Oh my, have you ran a `docker search gaslight`? I just did and it looks like docker hub is being used to distribute ebooks? WTF... This is why we can't have nice things....
  - dasfsi 4y ago
    Not quite distribute, it feels like spammers are using dockerhub pages as a free publishing platform for posting links to even more scummy websites in promises to get free ebooks and full hindi movie downloads and my favorite "cleanmymac-x-443-cracked-activation-code-hot". Docker probably should've started their purge there, not with FOSS orgs...
Aeolun 4y ago
> This impacted less than 2% of our users. Hmm, I’m not sure how I feel about them making excuses a few sentences into what is supposed to be an apology.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  How is that an excuse? What do you define an excuse as?
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Maybe excuse is the wrong word. It’s like saying: “It only affected 2% of our users, therefore we figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. Nobody cares about 2%.” It’s those two percent they’re aiming to apologize to isn’t it? Then of course they missed the fact it would impact the entire OS community…
steponlego 4y ago
So wait, they're not ending Docker Free Teams any more? That's great news. Thanks to all the Docker team who realized what a horrible mistake this was.
hashtag-til 4y ago
Sorry, I’m already moving onto other repository options and also to `podman` as an alternative that cover 99% of my use cases. I won’t be caught up againg by Docker SNAFU.
terrorOf 4y ago
[dead]
btown 4y ago
So can team members still push security updates to an image on a public team account that’s not in their FOSS program? It’s still incredibly unclear if this is allowed, or if the existing images will be frozen in time until someone pays for the account. Still a nightmare for CISOs that rely on the ecosystem.
mayli 4y ago
> For those of you catching up, we recently emailed accounts that are members of Free Team organizations, to let them know that they will lose features unless they move to one of our supported free or paid offerings. This impacted less than 2% of our users. Why do you really want to kill those 2% of your users?
ilyt 4y ago
> This impacted less than 2% of our users. "We apologise, and also here are some our 'lie by statistics' excuses where we don't count who used those org repos but just the org owners"
aspectmin 4y ago
Ugh. We war-roomed, and subsequently kicked off a big project this morning to replace most, if not all, docker in our infrastructure and dev systems with podman. The first messaging clearly read to me that they would delete everything (including images), the second just seems like they backtracked internally despite claiming a different meaning for the original message. I have lost trust in this company.
- HelloNurse 4y ago
  If Docker had any sense of leadership and community, they would have predicted that this petty extortion would have caused severe damage and loss of trust. This is irrational, self-destructive greed, not the more usual transparent and regretful removal of generous pricing plans and unsustainable services that dotcoms have made the public familiar with.
sgammon 4y ago
this is a great reason to use OCI images and a Codespace on your Mac or Windows machine and just skip the entire "Docker" step altogether. just a reminder that you can do this, docker images are just tarballs, and the faster you exit a vice the less it can squeeze you.
mickertl3465 4y ago
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mickertl3465 4y ago
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mickertl3465 4y ago
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technick 4y ago
I expect a third round of apology emails from Docker with less gaslighting and real numbers of how this affected 20k users.. or maybe more, not in a 2% format. Depending on how this goes I might let my purchasing department know it's time to cancel our enterprise subscription with Docker. I have a IBM RH corp account and would much rather pay RH at that point because Docker is burning all of it's cred in the dumpster out back.
JanneVee 4y ago
I'm afraid that I don't accept the apology. You are taking money from my organization, making it hard for my organization to administrate the users you ask money for because it is not enough seats and then communicate something that I can construe as having potential for a supply-chain attack on my production environment. I get it you need to make money, but without SSO for smaller enterprises you have us and them scrambling for alternatives.
namaria 4y ago
Layering vendor tools in boom times is great! Free offerings are generous, tools help enormously getting greenfield projects started. We can pipe tools together and with a shinny new front end we can bring a new product to market in days, maybe hours. We can even release our own tooling as frameworks, a nice career boost to developers involved. Then comes the crunch times, and suddenly random vendors can rug pull your entire operation. Yet we keep doing it every boom time because it's so easy!
rswail 4y ago
So we need a generic artifact repository (containers are just one type) that also maintains an SBOM (with a machine readable format, eg SPDX) for the artifact content. Is anyone going to fund that? We have a way to do that with git (and signed commits) that covers source code. Is there something that someone can build out of P2P/IFPS/? that would allow that to happen, including some form of search/identification?
- HelloNurse 4y ago
  Why should remote image storage rely on relatively slow and complex resilient and extremely scalable P2P distributed technology instead of just downloading big files and verifying digital signatures from one authoritative repository?
tangmonk 4y ago
docker hub, next porn hub

592 points by mmbleh 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Given the number of times that Docker the company has rugged the community, I am highly pessimistic of their organization / paying them. I'd rather run my own registry.

PhysicalNomad 4y ago

I stopped using Docker entirely after the Moby mess, when Podman came around without needing a daemon, and better runtimes became available for Kubernetes. It's been the inferior product for a long time, only kept alive by the dev mindshare they gained early on.

oofbey 4y ago
It's synonymous with "containers" for a lot of people. I know a lot of groups that use docker to build containers and other infra to run them. Too bad the company screwed up turning their technology into a real business, or taking a graceful massive exit when they had the chance. Their VC's doubtless pushed them towards an IPO when they didn't really have a solid revenue plan. Once they started nagging / forcing / tricking people into paying for what they had offered for free, they company was doomed. The "+WASM" branding all over their website reeks the sad desperation of a has-been coulda-been. Sorry folks, you built cool and important technology, but that's not good enough if you're greedy.

markus_zhang 4y ago

I'm a bit surprised that they are struggle to make $$ with such a popular tool. But I could be wrong.

sasakrsmanovic2 4y ago

Good job on docker to come clean so quickly.

eatonphil 4y ago
I'm not sure I'd call this "coming clean" since it doesn't seem like they really changed anything. They just apologized for that what they are doing is upsetting people.

mellowyeller 4y ago

The third sentence in their apology is "This impacted less than 2% of our users." What is that supposed to convey? It feels like a handwave. 'We're sorry we mistreated you, look how small you are to us.'

slantedview 4y ago
The "2% of our users" is indeed misleading since most users don't run organizations, and it's mainly orgs that were affected. A better metric would be what % of orgs were impacted.
phphphphp 4y ago
The 2% they’re referring to are businesses that are using Docker’s hosted services for free. The majority of the outrage was from people thinking about the non-business users, that is, open source projects, which Docker unintentionally implied would be impacted by this change. Docker are apologising for their poor communication which made people think this change applied to more than just a tiny portion of the user base (who are probably happy to pay). They’re not apologising for the change.
- fabian2k 4y ago
  > Less than 2% of Docker users have a Free Team organization on their account. I don't think so. The quote above is what they say on that page, and I think that is a pretty useless metric. It affects 2% of all Docker Hub users, 100% of all Free Team users.
- lozenge 4y ago
  Anybody who uses "docker pull" or "FROM" and not pointing at their own hosting or their own paid Docker account was affected as evidenced by the thousands of comments worried about the impact.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago

threeseed 4y ago

Not sure how this changes anything. Their open source program [1] only grants a free 1-year Docker Team subscription. After which time the whole system is unusable. And most of those features aren't what open source teams even need which is surely just basic multi-user access. They really should have just tightened the entry criteria for their open source offering if they were so concerned about it being misused. https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-program-has-a-new-look/ https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-pro...

mikesir87 4y ago
(Docker DevRel team here) For clarification, the program grants one year of access, but is indefinitely renewable as long as the program is still compliant with current criteria.
- zamnos 4y ago
  Thank you for the clarification. For reference, are there any open source projects you've seen that suddenly change course to being paid products and would lose open source status according to Docker? Any Linux distros that suddenly went closed source? Are there any sort of general public licenses that might preclude projects from even doing so?
  - elkos 4y ago
    Say a distro sells laptops with the distro pre-installed while also providing the same image online and might also sell consulting services to companies utilizing the distro. According to my undestanding of the terms of Docker's opend source program, even if said distro was fully open-source and a run by a non-profit they would be non-eligible to participate in the program.
- mplanchard 4y ago
  Is this renewal automatic? Having to go recertify with docker once a year for my tiny open source project that we happen to have an image for is literally infinity percent more hassle than I would like to deal with.

ericb 4y ago

If they are listening to feedback, first is that a 30 day timeframe sends the message that "we feel our profit is more important than whatever else you are working on, so much that you should either pay us, or if you cannot afford it, immediately halt your other activities to reduce our costs." None of that builds trust. As someone affected, I'm ok with paying. * I don't like feeling tricked * I don't like feeling held hostage * Make your changes in a manner that preceding the announcement with "SURPRISE!" wouldn't be fitting This was done with no notice--basically a bill for RIGHT NOW with no warning, and it seems that the only reason for that was greed? Docker just hit 100 million in ARR. I mean, really, you can't afford to role this out gracefully?!?

throitallaway 4y ago
Docker Hub has become deeply integrated into the workflow of development/pipelines/runtime environments/etc. Announcing something like this with 30 days notice is extremely insulting. They're a software company (maybe not...?) and should be well aware of the amount of interruption that a 30 day notice on something like this causes.
bpodgursky 4y ago
I can assure you that Docker is not trying to protect any profits. More like... slow the cash hemorrhage.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  how can you "assure" that?
- ericb 4y ago
  Docker is over 100 million ARR from what I understand, so that's a strange thing to say.
  - jzb 4y ago
    But what’s their debt and running costs?

bovermyer 4y ago

I already moved my relevant containers to GHCR. Side note - Google's "crane" CLI tool was marvelous for this purpose.

Macha 4y ago

> What are the benefits of a paid Docker subscription? > Docker Pro is ideal for individual developers looking to accelerate productivity. > Docker Team is ideal for small teams looking to collaborate productively. > Docker Business is ideal for businesses looking for centralized management and advanced security capabilities. Visit our pricing page to learn more. I'm not quite sure that answers the question, just how docker would like it's customers to self-discriminate.

WWLink 4y ago

Ah, good ole Docker. When they did the "it's not free anymore" rugpull on Docker Desktop, I couldn't use it at work anymore since they wouldn't invoice us for less than a 50 seat license. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses won't buy things without invoicing for legal reasons. It really upset me because I had a pretty solid workflow with docker desktop on a mac. Now I can't use that anymore. I am not surprised they continue to make foolish moves trying to monetize their software. I get it, you need to monetize your software... but this is dumb.

solarkraft 4y ago
What's the workflow? What more is Docker Desktop than a way to get the Docker CLI on non-Linux machines?
pnw 4y ago
I get invoices for my $5 Pro plan. Do you mean they wouldn't take the order on credit?
- InvaderFizz 4y ago
  Probably means they would not do NET30 or the like terms to fit with their corporate purchasing workflow.
  - pnw 4y ago
    Pretty hard to get NET30 invoicing on a transaction which is less than $450, especially if you've chosen the monthly plan. It's just not worth the labor chasing an unpaid $450 invoice every damn month.
    - xen2xen1 4y ago
      Isn't that what resellers are for?
- Volundr 4y ago
  I assume they mean Docker issues an invoice which the company's AP department can then pay by either cutting a check or ACH transfer. At least that's what we had to get all our vendors to start doing when the company I worked for killed off corporate cards and quit letting employees expense things like this.

mig39 4y ago

We're sorry there was a backlash.

jaimex2 4y ago
Needs South Park gifs.

system16 4y ago

It's almost becoming a cliche for companies to release damage control follow-ups like this after they pull a bait and switch. It's always "we're sorry that we didn't communicate our bait and switch effectively". Not we're sorry that we pulled a bait and switch. We're sorry you didn't understand the value in this bait and switch. It's your fault, actually. But we're sorry you're angry. Now stop giving us negative attention.

jeron 4y ago
Ah, but there’s no such thing as negative press. Look how many people are talking about Docker now!!
- irrational 4y ago
  On our team we are mainly talking about how will we divest of Docker.
- user3939382 4y ago
  > No such thing as negative press Tell that to Silicon Valley Bank after that WSJ article that started the run lol
AbraKdabra 4y ago
We're deeply sorry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4.
dheera 4y ago
The forces of capitalism reward this, it will continue to happen as long as we pick pure capitalism as a system, and keep assigning values to companies purely on financials with no consideration toward their ability to empathize and communicate.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  There's no such thing as "pure capitalism" – not if you're talking about things that exist. In an ideal free market with perfectly-rational omniscient actors, this issue wouldn't occur. I don't think you even need the omniscience: trust, memory, reputation/vouching and basic game theory should be sufficient (though I haven't proven this). Alternatively: a free market with contracts, where all things go through the system, would work. In the real world, the system consists of people, each of whom is optimising for a particular thing. Very few people are optimising for "make the most money, at the expense of all else". Show me anyone (even a billionaire), and I'll show you somebody who values other things higher than the accumulation of money. And plenty of things don't go through "the system of capitalism": we have commons, and volunteers, and favours, and coerced unpaid labour / wage theft. "The forces of capitalism" might be a good shorthand for the reasons behind this problem, but it's not strictly an accurate one: these issues aren't inherent to capitalism. They're not problems with capitalism, but problems with this system. (Capitalism does have other, different problems that are pretty baked in, like how capital is power and power lets you accrue capital, but I don't see how that relates to this issue.)

eyeareque 4y ago

I’m guessing they did this change because the cost of giving a free service isn’t cheap for docker?

ericb 4y ago
It seems the concept of a loss leader is "lost" on Docker. Some MBA with a spreadsheet at Docker hasn't realized that where the upstream OSS goes, the rest follow.
- sleepybrett 4y ago
  Loss leader for products that don't sell? The change to a full open source toolchain for their core products was more or less painless.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  They've historically had trouble having that loss leader lead to a non-loss.
  - ericb 4y ago
    A lot of folks have missed the updates--they are now past 100 million in annual recurring revenue--that history has evolved.
- nstart 4y ago
  I have no idea about their internals but I’m curious how many people used docker’ own registry offering as their repo manager of choice because it’s configured to lookup the docker registry by default. Easier to setup pipelines and dev env workflows etc. If this move means that people have to now manage access to multiple registries like quay and ghcr, will that also incentivize people to go ahead and try migrating to these other registries. Especially given that dockers own registry has such poor permission management.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
The problem runs much deeper than that. Most of what Docker offers is commodity software. You can get docker image hosting from a variety of sources and hosting your own registry isn't that hard. All you need is a docker container and some file storage or bucket. Docker for desktop is nice but there are free alternatives. Docker registries are included with most cloud services (AWS, Azure, Gcloud, digital ocean) and you can use those to self host as well without too much issues. Github and gitlab offer docker registries as well. As do lots of other companies. Mostly, those services make money from other things than hosting docker images. That's just a low value commodity that they need to offer the really interesting stuff. If you are going to charge people for some expensive kubernetes cluster, they need a place to dump their container images. So you offer that for free. It's just a few GB of storage. It literally is a rounding error on the total bill. It does not matter. Charging for that does not make sense. That's the problem docker has right now: they need companies to pay them absurd amounts of money for something that is essentially a low value commodity and they don't really have anything with a lot of value that they could charge for instead. And the harder they insist people need to pay, the more they erode their position as a leader in this space (which arguably they lost years ago). While it was free and convenient, people used them. But now that that's no longer the case, people engineer around them. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The one asset they still had (people treating them as the de-facto place to park docker containers) is basically being lost. And as soon as that stops, it's going to get harder for them to gain new customers or even retain existing ones. Contrast that with Github that used to charge for stuff that they now give away for free. I paid for it back in the day. And now I don't. Except Github is making loads of money from companies that outgrow the freemium tier. And they have a steady supply of happy freemium users using their services for free transitioning to valuable paid services. And they get to host the entirety (well close to it) of the software developer population on this planet. It's the largest professional network outside of linkedin. Which of course MS also owns. It would be madness to incentivize users to not use that by charging for it. It's way too valuable for that. Speaking of MS, they should just buy out Docker. Fire the management. Get rid of their sales department and revitalize docker and dockerhub development and integrate it into github. It's so complementary to Github that it's a no-brainer. And probably investors are getting fed up with the way things are going at docker. I imagine this could be a relatively cheap acquisition for them. This isn't OpenAI, LinkedIn, or Github.

lozenge 4y ago

Not much has changed then. If you don't meet the strict criteria of the Open Source Program, for example you are a for profit company publishing an open source image, you can't upload new versions of your public images. Your images are one CVE away from becoming useless. If you do meet the criteria, they will build images for you. No way to have your own build process. All artifacts are made public.

computronus 4y ago

Reading carefully about image deletion: * "public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them" * "Public images will only disappear if the maintainer of the image decides to proactively delete it from Docker Hub. If the maintainer takes no action, we will continue to distribute their public images." This sounds good, but it would be better to explicitly say "if you opt to let your free organization be suspended, Docker Hub will continue distributing your public images indefinitely anyway". It feels like there's a loophole here where if a public image comes to have no maintainer - because they abandoned its organization - then it no longer benefits from this assurance. That seems unlikely, but given how this change has been going so far, it's tough to give Docker the benefit of the doubt.

grrowl 4y ago
Would be worried that the old images will still be distributed, but if an open source maintainer needed to push an update (e.g. for security reasons) they'd need to sign up to the paid account

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

chillbill 4y ago

What I’d like to know is why the hell is there so many Docker editions/licenses? Did docker just hire people who made Windows vista? Also, just switch to Podman already people…

antoineMoPa 4y ago
Doesn't podman use docker.io images by default?

franky47 4y ago

> You can migrate to a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed. Support request sent, I wish there were more clear on what "Topic" and "Severity" this kind of request falls into. #HugOps to the tech support team that's going to be flooded with requests.

mkl95 4y ago

> You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed. This company raised $400M+ and they cannot be arsed to implement a feature to change account types.

hectormalot 4y ago

Compared to the recent apology from Fly.io [1], Docker's corporate apology is terrible. Fly's was open about the struggles they faced and how they feel about it, empathetic to their customers, and come across as genuine (also reinforced by mrkurt's active follow up both in their community, as wel as here on HN). Docker's on the other hand is none of that, and full of corporate PR red flags: - "This only impacted less than 2% of our users" signals that they're not really sorry. It tells me they see this as a 'loud minority' problem - "This does not affect [list of 6 other types of subscriptions]" -> signals the post is partially being used to promote the other subscriptions. Reinforced by the "what are the benefits of a Docker subscription" at the bottom. - It's still unclear (to me) what is the actual implication for some of the non-official open source projects here. On the one hand they say: "Public images will only disappear if the maintainer decides to proactively delete it from Docker Hub". Further down they mention "we will defer any organization suspension or deletion while the DSOS application is under review". Clearly they do intent to suspend organisations, but maybe let old images remain? Then the problem remains, as it prevents future updates. Despite what it tries to say in words, (for me) this post just reinforces the initial signal of both not understanding and not caring about the open source usage. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516

MBCook 4y ago
> It tells me they see this as a 'loud minority' problem I don’t think that’s what it is. I think it’s minimizing. Don’t worry, it’s only 2%. The problem is that’s 2% directly. If my organization has a Docker license, we’re not effected because we’re commercial. But that’s not true is it? If we use Docker there is a very good chance that we use or base some of our images on open source images. We’re effected indirectly. I admit it’s probably not possible to measure, maybe even estimate. But the total number of organizations this change will be a problem for us way more than 2%. And they don’t want to admit it.

siva7 4y ago

I'm baffled who the heck wrote and approved such a poor communication piece with the original mail

dawnerd 4y ago

So if it's only such a small amount of accounts, then surely it's barely a line item. Makes no sense, something doesn't add up here.

giaour 4y ago
I would guess that those 2% of users account for more than 2% of the load on Docker Hub. Open source projects on a regular release cadence would push images more frequently than your average user, and those public images from the projects themselves were probably used in FROM statements more frequently than other images.
- dawnerd 4y ago
  Obviously but they should use that metric of resources used vs how small the impact is.
  - giaour 4y ago
    I think they used one metric (resources used) when deciding to kill free teams, then their PR team scrambled to find another metric to make the whole kerfuffle seem like a tempest in a teapot when the backlash hit.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Sure. But what share of their users use those 2% images. Surely way more. Also I don't think Docker grasps how much their users value a one way stop for pulling images of OSS. It is a really stupid move.

tananaev 4y ago

The key part for our project is "You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket." Migrating to a free personal account will work for many small open source projects. That's what we're planning to do.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

I have nothing against Docker Inc. But it's worth noting that this kind of screw up happens when your company, from the top down, does not practice a culture in which empathy/compassion for people comes first. In all areas of the business, everyone should first be thinking, how does this impact the people using this thing? Have I talked to them? Do they understand what's happening? Do they have concerns? Have I fully addressed them? Is this going to make their lives harder, or will this be scary, or confusing? It's my biggest pet peeve. Both as a user and an employee. If you don't take the time to care, it's really obvious, and an easy way to piss people off and inconvenience them. From a business perspective that drives customers to your competitors and makes employees quit. From a personal perspective, it's just a dick thing to do.

avereveard 4y ago

Can't they just idk release a list of the images that are likely to be impacted unless the owner takes action? I don't care much of the business decision, it's their house. I care for the persons I support whom use docker and I dont see a way to prepare them without sounding like a crackpot and looking like a fool if they after making noise turns out they aren't impacted.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

Two solutions that don't seem to be mentioned: 1. Let any user have how many "free teams" they want, but restrict the image size (under 1GB?) and/or downloads (under 1,000/month?). Maybe let the community vote for open source images exempt from this restriction. 2. Run a free link redirect service: user registers my-team on hub.docker.com, links my-team/my-image with their preferred registry my-registry.com, client-side docker pull my-team/my-image resolves automagically to my-registry.com/my-team/my-image.

dpkirchner 4y ago
3. Let paying teams sponsor free teams. Maybe allow multiple organizations to sponsor a single team. (The free team should be able to refuse sponsorship on a case by case basis)

sleepybrett 4y ago

Faq does not include the most asked question: "Why the fuck are you still so bad at this?"

mikesir87 4y ago
(from the Docker DevRel team) Ha! Just had to say... this gave me a good laugh! We're trying to get better... I swear! Comms are hard. We'll get there.
- 3np 4y ago
  Appreciate it. I'd advise to try hard to not be dismissive of even the more snide and flamey comments in this thread - their interpretations are valid from what I see posted so far.

jacooper 4y ago

GHCR goes brrrrrrrrrr...... Also quay.io is free for public repos.

nielsole 4y ago

Previous communication: > If you don't upgrade to a paid subscription, Docker will retain your organization data for 30 days, after which it will be subject to deletion. During that period you will maintain access to any of your public images. New communication: > We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them. We’re sorry that our initial communications failed to make this clear. Given these statements directly contradict each other I am a bit surprised this is called clarification. It feels like they changed the actual strategy, not just the communication around it.

eternalban 4y ago
That depends on what "organization data" means. Does that phrasing cover the images or just the existence of the organization in Docker (i.e. deleted organization)?
- gpm 4y ago
  > During that period you will maintain access to any of your public images. Pretty unambiguously means "after that period you may not have access to any of your public images".
  - eternalban 4y ago
    Isn't that like a service like Github saying 'you will maintain access to any of your public projects' as in administrative access to one's own projects. After that period, you are no longer the owner of that repo and you no longer have "access". So I can still clone your github project but alas you no longer can commit to it. https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/orgs/ https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/orgs/ https://hub.docker.com/orgs https://hub.docker.com/orgs
    - wholinator2 4y ago
      Doesn't sound like it to me. If they meant "administrative access" they should have said "administrative access". They didn't, they just said "access" which unambiguously means just "access". Would've been very easy for them to make a one word correction somewhere in the dozen or so people who should have read this before it went out. But they didn't, they just said "access". If they wanted unambiguous meaning, they could have easily just said what they meant. Methinks that's exactly what they did

gardenhedge 4y ago

"We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them." Was HN spreading fake news then?

willdr 4y ago
Honestly, not removing them but putting them in a readonly state is worse than removing them.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> How can I see if I’m affected? > Please consult the Organizations page of your Docker account; any affected organizations are labeled “Docker Free Team” in the “Subscription” column. Less than 2% of Docker users have a Free Team organization on their account. Interesting theory, but no; my account is paid, but I'm using third party images that are rather harder to verify.

ryan29 4y ago

Edit: It looks like you can migrate from a team to a personal account: > You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket. No action will be taken against your account while your ticket is being processed.

imron 4y ago
> I don't get it. It's still exactly the same problem for me. So you do get it then. Sorry, not sorry.

ignoramous 4y ago

> ...we recently emailed accounts that are members of Free Team organizations, to let them know that they will lose features unless they move to one of our supported free or paid offerings. This impacted less than 2% of our users. What percentage of those orgs / users hosted popular docker images? Surely, 2% is a small enough number to warrant a public apology?

klooney 4y ago
Plus, this isn't 2% of the random people who have created an account since 2013, it's the images that everyone freeloads off of.

linuxftw 4y ago

Lots of people outraged here, but did any organization step up to fill this (perceived) gap? Docker is way too generous IMO. Petabytes of freeloader data they'll never generate a nickle from. Everyone around here wants people to pay $20/month for some newspaper, and spend $0/month on infrastructure that helps run the internet. It's crazy town.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> Lots of people outraged here, but did any organization step up to fill this (perceived) gap? Well, quay already exists. > Everyone around here wants people to pay $20/month for some newspaper, and spend $0/month on infrastructure that helps run the internet. And you believe that those 2 ideas are both held by the same people?
- linuxftw 4y ago
  I'm aware of Quay, I don't know the exact features that are going away, perceived or otherwise, from Docker that I can say this would fit everyone's usecase. > And you believe that those 2 ideas are both held by the same people? If I had to generalize the audience here, yes.

renewiltord 4y ago

Cool. I'm just glad I don't have to replicate all these images to my own ECR.

r00fus 4y ago

They say that their separate "open source program" (DSOS) is completely better than Free Teams. Why didn't they just migrate everyone on Free Teams to DSOS and then worry about the qualifications for those migrated afterwards (and less stringently)?

evrflx 4y ago
And why don't they answer for nearly a year after submitting a request, only to THEN ask to resubmit the request with an improved form or something. After which everything goes back to silence?

slantedview 4y ago

This isn't a good clarification. While Docker says they will not delete images, it doesn't clarify whether they will delete organizations. Indeed, under "Can someone else squat my namespace?", it says "if your organization is suspended, deleted, or you choose to leave Docker voluntarily", which implies that orgs may also be deleted involuntarily. This is still a problem.

maerF0x0 4y ago

Only fair that this also gets 1500 points and front page

kundi 4y ago

What if the 0.1% of the users are the ones that you should deeply care for?

wkdneidbwf 4y ago

oh glorious docker thank you for completely changing course and not deleting our data and then acting like you never said you’d delete it in the first place. fuck docker!

voytec 4y ago

> This impacted less than 2% of our users. Ah, only 2%. Completely irrelevant number. Move along.

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
It baffles me that, for such small quantities, they don't just "grandfather" existing users and only change conditions for new signups. The insignificant problem would sort itself out in time, instead of creating a lot of friction and a plume of dumpster fire smoke, for very little or no gain at all.
- voytec 4y ago
  The percentage of users used in this corpo-speak may likely be counted against active and inactive accounts and almost certainly is not equal to percentage of transfer costs.

patientplatypus 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317 - March 2023 (727 comments) Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025 - March 2023 (105 comments) Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949 - March 2023 (12 comments) Also: Elixir: Docker now charges open source orgs $300 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579 - March 2023 (38 comments) Ask HN: Docker Alternatives? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491 - March 2023 (5 comments)

Aleklart 4y ago

I don’t get the hate of Docker as a company. Yes, this is crap technology that incentivise resource inefficiency at its peak form, but this is how stacks like ruby or python are at least working. Still, docker org invented all the tools, gave them for free, promote, document and support them, gave free global registry that can be filled by anyone and contains petabytes of trash, with free thousands of terabytes of egress monthly. They gave away all their intellectual work to RedHat/bazaar and participate in development of “open standards” for free. And now when they take away some expensive toy, developers became hostile and call them unreliable.

sgammon 4y ago
i think the hate comes from them squandering a position of their magnitude, built upon the investment and trust of the open source ecosystem. github set a precedent with free public repos, but they traded the cost of supporting that for being the canonical way to store source code online (or as close to it as one company can get). docker accesses this privilege but then demands that open source people, who are by definition not paid for their work directly, must pay to host images on their branded platform, the one which guarantees them a place in the technology hall of fame. the double-punch of that failed remunerative trade ends up feeling to that community like a betrayal; not to mention the self-defeating strategy it embodies, since a technical solution here is not only possible, but would be expected from a company granted that position and privilege in the software supply chain (technical aptitude / excellence). at worst it is a betrayal, at best it comes across as lazy, because they are not reaching for a technical solution which can satisfy every constraint; they are satisfied launching one that merely satisfies their own needs, to the detriment of the community that supported them.
sgammon 4y ago
i love Docker, but i think people by and large forget that OCI images are a thing, and that ultimately we are talking about slightly complex tarballs here. i do think Docker is squandering an insanely privileged position here, even if i'm not particularly invested/dogmatic personally about Docker as a brand. only every so often does a company become a member of the popular lexicon -- an Uber instead of a Taxi, a Kleenex instead of a tissue -- we pull Docker images every day even though they are actually OCI images, or hosted on GitHub. this privilege is insanely huge and it is one granted through technical aptitude, intense problem solving, commitment to open source and tooling, and so on, that the Docker project displayed for its first two decades or so of existence. where it fell off that wagon as a brand, and misaligned with its technology, i don't know. this is just one person's 2c.

jdlyga 4y ago

Monetizing what we took for granted as available for free has really rubbed everyone the wrong way. I've noticed teams are much less likely to request paid Docker Desktop, especially since there are perfectly suitable free alternatives nowadays. We all use either native docker engine on Windows + WSL2, or the MIT licensed Colima on Mac. Honestly, Docker Desktop was always a fairly heavyweight and cumbersome app with a very high opinion of itself.

xbar 4y ago

Who is docker for now?

sys_64738 4y ago

Stupid is as Stupid does.

solarkraft 4y ago

It's cool that you're not completely deaf, but the damage has been done and not only due to this announcement. There are alternatives and people are increasingly choosing them.

manifoldgeo 4y ago

> This impacted less than 2% of our users. I think they mean it impacts less than 2% of user _accounts_. Not every account is created equal. If you were an open-source org with millions of image downloads a month, having your org deleted would have an outsized effect on the community. Many more Docker Hub users than 2% stand to be affected by these changes, even if the nominal value of 2% of user accounts is accurate. Also, this "apology" does not feel even 2% apologetic. "I am sorry you misunderstood us" is not an apology. They're running the seldom used "docker pull gaslight:latest" command.

technick 4y ago
Oh my, have you ran a `docker search gaslight`? I just did and it looks like docker hub is being used to distribute ebooks? WTF... This is why we can't have nice things....
- dasfsi 4y ago
  Not quite distribute, it feels like spammers are using dockerhub pages as a free publishing platform for posting links to even more scummy websites in promises to get free ebooks and full hindi movie downloads and my favorite "cleanmymac-x-443-cracked-activation-code-hot". Docker probably should've started their purge there, not with FOSS orgs...

Aeolun 4y ago

> This impacted less than 2% of our users. Hmm, I’m not sure how I feel about them making excuses a few sentences into what is supposed to be an apology.

jobs_throwaway 4y ago
How is that an excuse? What do you define an excuse as?
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Maybe excuse is the wrong word. It’s like saying: “It only affected 2% of our users, therefore we figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. Nobody cares about 2%.” It’s those two percent they’re aiming to apologize to isn’t it? Then of course they missed the fact it would impact the entire OS community…

steponlego 4y ago

So wait, they're not ending Docker Free Teams any more? That's great news. Thanks to all the Docker team who realized what a horrible mistake this was.

hashtag-til 4y ago

Sorry, I’m already moving onto other repository options and also to `podman` as an alternative that cover 99% of my use cases. I won’t be caught up againg by Docker SNAFU.

terrorOf 4y ago

[dead]

btown 4y ago

So can team members still push security updates to an image on a public team account that’s not in their FOSS program? It’s still incredibly unclear if this is allowed, or if the existing images will be frozen in time until someone pays for the account. Still a nightmare for CISOs that rely on the ecosystem.

mayli 4y ago

> For those of you catching up, we recently emailed accounts that are members of Free Team organizations, to let them know that they will lose features unless they move to one of our supported free or paid offerings. This impacted less than 2% of our users. Why do you really want to kill those 2% of your users?

ilyt 4y ago

> This impacted less than 2% of our users. "We apologise, and also here are some our 'lie by statistics' excuses where we don't count who used those org repos but just the org owners"

aspectmin 4y ago

Ugh. We war-roomed, and subsequently kicked off a big project this morning to replace most, if not all, docker in our infrastructure and dev systems with podman. The first messaging clearly read to me that they would delete everything (including images), the second just seems like they backtracked internally despite claiming a different meaning for the original message. I have lost trust in this company.

HelloNurse 4y ago
If Docker had any sense of leadership and community, they would have predicted that this petty extortion would have caused severe damage and loss of trust. This is irrational, self-destructive greed, not the more usual transparent and regretful removal of generous pricing plans and unsustainable services that dotcoms have made the public familiar with.

sgammon 4y ago

this is a great reason to use OCI images and a Codespace on your Mac or Windows machine and just skip the entire "Docker" step altogether. just a reminder that you can do this, docker images are just tarballs, and the faster you exit a vice the less it can squeeze you.

mickertl3465 4y ago

[flagged]

mickertl3465 4y ago

[flagged]

mickertl3465 4y ago

[flagged]

technick 4y ago

I expect a third round of apology emails from Docker with less gaslighting and real numbers of how this affected 20k users.. or maybe more, not in a 2% format. Depending on how this goes I might let my purchasing department know it's time to cancel our enterprise subscription with Docker. I have a IBM RH corp account and would much rather pay RH at that point because Docker is burning all of it's cred in the dumpster out back.

JanneVee 4y ago

I'm afraid that I don't accept the apology. You are taking money from my organization, making it hard for my organization to administrate the users you ask money for because it is not enough seats and then communicate something that I can construe as having potential for a supply-chain attack on my production environment. I get it you need to make money, but without SSO for smaller enterprises you have us and them scrambling for alternatives.

namaria 4y ago

Layering vendor tools in boom times is great! Free offerings are generous, tools help enormously getting greenfield projects started. We can pipe tools together and with a shinny new front end we can bring a new product to market in days, maybe hours. We can even release our own tooling as frameworks, a nice career boost to developers involved. Then comes the crunch times, and suddenly random vendors can rug pull your entire operation. Yet we keep doing it every boom time because it's so easy!

rswail 4y ago

So we need a generic artifact repository (containers are just one type) that also maintains an SBOM (with a machine readable format, eg SPDX) for the artifact content. Is anyone going to fund that? We have a way to do that with git (and signed commits) that covers source code. Is there something that someone can build out of P2P/IFPS/? that would allow that to happen, including some form of search/identification?

HelloNurse 4y ago
Why should remote image storage rely on relatively slow and complex resilient and extremely scalable P2P distributed technology instead of just downloading big files and verifying digital signatures from one authoritative repository?

tangmonk 4y ago

docker hub, next porn hub