Can Docker Survive Google? (bloomberg.com) 98
Though Docker has 400 corporate customers -- and plans to double its sales staff -- "here's what happens to a startup when Google gets all up in its business," reads a recent headline at Bloomberg:
Docker Inc. helped establish a type of software tool known as containers...and they've made the company rich. Venture capitalists have poured about $240 million into the startup, according to research firm CB Insights. Then along came Google, with its own free container system called Kubernetes. Google has successfully inserted Kubernetes into the coder toolbox. While Docker and Kubernetes serve slightly different purposes, customers who choose Google's tool can avoid paying Docker.
The startup gives away its most popular product while trying to convince developers to pay for extras, notably a program that does the same thing as Google's. "Kubernetes basically has ruled the industry, and it is the de facto standard," said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC. "Docker has to figure out how do they differentiate themselves." It's up to [Docker CEO] Steve Singh to escape a situation that's trapped many startups battling cash-rich tech giants like Google, dangling free alternatives... "They invented this great tech, but they are not the ones profiting from it," said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC.
Though Docker's CEO is hoping to take the company public someday, Slashdot reader oaf357 predicts a different future: To say that Docker had a very rough 2017 is an understatement. Aside from Uber, I can't think of a more utilized, hyped, and well funded Silicon Valley startup (still in operation) fumbling as bad as Docker did in 2017. People will look back on 2017 as the year Docker, a great piece of software, was completely ruined by bad business practices leading to its end in 2018.
His article criticizes things like the new Moby upstream for the Docker project, along with "Docker's late and awkward embrace of Kubernetes... It's almost as if Docker is conceding itself to being a marginal consulting firm in the container space." And he suggests that ultimately Docker could be acquired by "a large organization like Oracle or Microsoft."
The startup gives away its most popular product while trying to convince developers to pay for extras, notably a program that does the same thing as Google's. "Kubernetes basically has ruled the industry, and it is the de facto standard," said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC. "Docker has to figure out how do they differentiate themselves." It's up to [Docker CEO] Steve Singh to escape a situation that's trapped many startups battling cash-rich tech giants like Google, dangling free alternatives... "They invented this great tech, but they are not the ones profiting from it," said Gary Chen, an analyst at IDC.
Though Docker's CEO is hoping to take the company public someday, Slashdot reader oaf357 predicts a different future: To say that Docker had a very rough 2017 is an understatement. Aside from Uber, I can't think of a more utilized, hyped, and well funded Silicon Valley startup (still in operation) fumbling as bad as Docker did in 2017. People will look back on 2017 as the year Docker, a great piece of software, was completely ruined by bad business practices leading to its end in 2018.
His article criticizes things like the new Moby upstream for the Docker project, along with "Docker's late and awkward embrace of Kubernetes... It's almost as if Docker is conceding itself to being a marginal consulting firm in the container space." And he suggests that ultimately Docker could be acquired by "a large organization like Oracle or Microsoft."
Re:Why our patent system is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
What invention? The idea of containers has been around since long before Docker came along. They were good at refining it and making it popular, but it was on the backs of many others who put effort into it over the years. Why should Docker have the ability to monopolize the market in this situation?
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What invention?
In dockers case the docker hub (and registry) are pretty novel. I personally don't think its novel enough for a patent but dumber shit has been patented in the past.
Re: Why our patent system is broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, those are my least favourite parts. The scientific HPC community seems to have invented Singularity, which is like docker but without the annoying bits.
All the Linux distros, cran, cpan, etc. would all like to dispute your claim that a software collection (local and remote) is novel.
I seem to remember that some of the VM systems had template machines you could download too.
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The hub is a bit more novel than just a software repository. It handles building your software as well as the layer bits to where you only download what is changed from the parent images.
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Yes, that's kind of cool, but it's not really a Docker innovation either. It's built on deployment scripts, like puppet or chef (or bash...) and union filesystems which go back to Plan 9 in the 80s and were first implemented in Linux in the early 90s. Docker uses one of several open source implementations.
Docker has done a nice job of pulling a bunch of stuff together and wrapping it up in a nice package. To me it looks like they've done extraordinarily well for that. I don't really see that there's any
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competing against large conglomerates venturing outside its core competences is not all that terrible as it appears. large corp almost always fails, there are lots and lots of business school case studies of such failures.
google in particular has poked its filthy little "do every evil" hands into all sorts of ventures(including warmongering and politics btw) outside its core of search and email/online office. and isn't profitable in any of them(even in andriod), and not even a loss making leader in most oth
Patents are government issued monopolies (Score:3)
You are right that patents have almost no place in software (unless something is truly revolution - like a compression algorithm t
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Being able to sell for $0 because its subsidized by your other products is a pretty good "execution" to be sure..
Re:Why our patent system is broken (Score:5, Informative)
Actually what happened was
1) Containers were already supported by Solaris, FreeBSD and others
2) Google saw the need for containers in Linux for its own purposes, as a lightweight alternative to VMs
3) Google helped add the necessary support to the Linux kernel, but kept its UI/application level tool private
4) Docker (originally dotCloud Inc) came along and added the UI/application level tool, which took off like gangbusters
5) Google released Kubernetes, which presumably is either #3 or a successor to it
6) Docker, trying to figure out how to make money, decided not to release certain enterprise features (e.g. orchestration of containers across a cluster) as open source
7) Developers started moving to Kubernetes
So Docker did not "invent" containers, even on Linux. They were, however, the innovators in the sense of Apple with the original Mac.
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Aren't containers inherently a bit bloaty, each container replicating the same things over and over and adding to waste storage space and slower apps. Are containers eliminating a problem or just adding to that problem. A fractured operating system environment, basically a broken leg in the computing tripod, the solution don't fix the fracture, add weight to it a permanent plaster caste to cover it over but leave it broken.
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With things like overlayfs or btrfs snapshots, no, containers are not just replicating things over and over. If you want to run services in isolation, they make perfect sense.
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Aren't containers inherently a bit bloaty, each container replicating the same things...
Yes, but you are optimizing the wrong problem.
Disk space is cheap, ram is fairly cheap, the overhead is probably less than you would expect and there are ways to reduce it if you actually have an issue.
Managing deployments, library conflicts, update roll outs etc. is expensive. It involves hours of labour, slows down your pipeline and a mistake can kill your service.
Using containers allows you to create a simple, easily testable, reproducible and deployable bundle with everything you care about and not
Re: Why our patent system is broken (Score:3)
You're confused because of the shitty summary which was written by someone who obviously has no clue what Docker, Kubernetes, or containers even are.
- Docker is a set of utilities used to manage various Linux container subsystems. It is all 100% open source and free.
- Docker THE COMPANY also makes a container ORCHESTRATION platform, called Docker Swarm, and a container image hosting system, called Docker Hub. These are not open source, they sell Enterprise licenses of these for money.
- Google ALSO made a co
Re: Why our patent system is broken (Score:2)
Containers != Container Orchestration (Score:5, Interesting)
Kubernetes (k8s) orchestrates containers, one of which is Docker. Docker Swarm is the proper comparison to k8s.
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Kubernetes does so much more than simply "orchestrates containers" ( for example: service discovery via etcd if I am not mistaken). That is the reason why it's so COMPLEX to set-up and manage properly.
In my company we did an analysis of different options and we settled with Mesos(handle resources)+Marathon(orchestrate based on Mesos)+Consul(service discovery)
We are handling hundreds of containers this way and we are quite happy with the solution even though I must acknowledge that I see most of open source
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Kubernetes is garbage. I'm highly doubtful of people who say they're successful using it for an extended time. It's nightmarish to install and to maintain.
We tried it and gave up after a while. We considered Mesos but ended up going with a bunch of Red Hat commercial products.
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We are fed up with the needless and growing complexity in the container ecosystem and are previewing a new open source project that takes a first step in trying to simplify containers, networking, orchestration and app deployments with Flockport.
People should be able to focus on their apps and not get bogged down with infrastructure that should be as easy to use as possible, fade into the background and be robust.
And give proper credit and recognition to all the wonderful open source Linux technology and pr
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Kubernetes is garbage. ... It's nightmarish to install and to maintain. We tried it and gave up after a while. ...ended up going with a bunch of Red Hat commercial products.
which are based kubernetes
Kubernetes ad-post much (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried Kubernetes and Docker this year, I went with Docker. Kubernetes is quite a bit more complicated to set up and has a LOT of minor inconsistencies and issues that make it hard to work with out of the box without loads and loads of third party tools (which are really workarounds).
Docker "just works" and although it has a few problems and is not quite as flexible as Kubernetes, they're actually working on fixing them. It for example comes without any built-in SPOF which for Kubernetes you have to figure out yourself (should I use etcd or zookeeper or something else).
All-in-all I think if you're used to working with "beta software" that is built to scale for "the cloud" then go with Kubernetes. If you need to simply set up a container with an existing (or legacy) software stack, Docker seems to be the way to go. Hence Docker, will not go away because enterprise users need it and Kubernetes will be the stack of choice for startups.
Alternate reality (Score:1)
Perhaps I live in an alternate reality:
My reality is:
Numerous startups funded by vast amounts of venture capital under the existing patent system that allegedly discourages innovation.
The lowest unemployment rate, enormous corporate profits and record stock market values in many years under a tax system that allegedly hinders economic growth and profits.
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Yep, judging by this flagrant hit piece Google's Kubernetes must really really be struggling to make any headway,
Docker is the defacto industry standard for containerisation, and is backed by Amazon and Microsoft for their respective cloud services, given that they're the only two cloud services that really matter I'd say it's Kubernetes that desperately needs to worry.
The real question this desperate hit piece begs is if Google is getting this deseprate, can Google's cloud offering survive Microsoft and Am
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Maybe they should stick to what they're good at rather than running shitty hit pieces with the assumption that the Slashdot community is dumb enough to fall for it.
Problem is, they're only really good at three things. Search, email, and web office. None of those things are all that profitable if people block ads, and ads are becoming more and more offensive in a variety of ways, so more and more people want to block them. They need to develop another core competency, or their days are numbered.
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Maybe they should stick to what they're good at rather than running shitty hit pieces with the assumption that the Slashdot community is dumb enough to fall for it.
Problem is, they're only really good at three things. Search, email, and web office. None of those things are all that profitable if people block ads, and ads are becoming more and more offensive in a variety of ways, so more and more people want to block them. They need to develop another core competency, or their days are numbered.
Exactly. I find that even going to places like local news sites requires ad-blocks to prevent 3rd party ads from injecting javascript to redirect me to some scam sweepstakes or download page. These 3rd party ad servers are really going to destroy these websites in the long run.
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I don't understand the whole Docker vs. Kubernetes analogy, considering that they are complimentary technologies. The whole point of Kubernetes is to add a better orchestration layer to containers, Docker containers in particular.
Sure, Docker EE with Docker Swarm is how Docker makes a big chunk of it's revenue, but they're playing ball with Google and adopting support for Kubernetes as well. Amazon is offering support for Kube as well, but they still offer their own Docker container orchestration solutions
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I don't understand the whole Docker vs. Kubernetes analogy, considering that they are complimentary technologies.
You are not crazy. Most people on this story (including the summary and editor) obviously have no clue about kubernetes.
Kubenetes being a Docker killer is like saying npm is a nodejs killer. Idiots.
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Amazon Kubernetes Service: https://aws.amazon.com/eks/ [amazon.com]
Azure Kubernetes Service: https://azure.microsoft.com/en... [microsoft.com]
Kubernetes doesn't compete with Docker. Kubernetes competes with Docker Swarm.
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Nope, set up a "production" Docker Swarm environment between 6 hosts, 3 managers with an ancient GlusterFS system.
Both docker and kubernetes are just front-ends... (Score:3)
Seriously, I could not care less how many fancy user front-ends are being built in order to use these container isolation features, they aren't rocket science.
I am more concerned about the one big still missing container isolation feature: Writes of meta-data to filesystems cannot be accounted to any control group, and so one evil software hammering a file system with meta-data operations from within a container can still bring the host (and its other guests) to its knees.
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Hence with a good scheduler or cgroups the Linux kernel can put fair sharing limits on such operations (and good filesystems will optimize really bad operations away).
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Docker on FreeBSD (Score:2)
You mean, when this [freshports.org] is "ever finished"?
No, does not seem like jails are in use [github.com]...
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Windows now has native container features. The docker situation there has gotten quite confused; "Docker for Windows" creates a Hyper-V virtual machine and runs Linux containers on it, or it can be switched to "Windows containers" mode where it runs Windows containers directly on the host machine, like it would Linux containers on a Linux host.
It's going to get even more confused, too, because Windows is gaining the ability to run Linux containers "natively".
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Kubernetes is not at all a front-end to Linux's isolation features. Kubernetes doesn't include any container engine. Most people use Docker's container engine with Kubernetes.
Kubernetes is a system for scheduling containers across a set of worker nodes, and includes features that make that easier, like service discovery and load balancing.
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The originator of an idea often gets trampled by bigger outfits who can subsidize a loss-making business targeted at the little guy.
The question is, how is it legal to subsidize a loss-making business (or business unit) for the purpose of killing off a competitor?
(Hint: it's not)
Microsoft did many startups in that way. Remember how Netscape got shredded to pieces by the free Internet Explorer?. Google just continues the tradition. Microsoft was evil then, Google is evil now. And the DOJ doesn't lift a finge
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Docker is the biggest threat to Docker.
A lot of people adopted it and started using it, and suddenly Docker changed their business model and only the paid version became available for RHEL and other commercial distros. You can use CE on CentOS but you need EE on RHEL.
I'm all for monetizing a product, but charging a fee based on the Linux distribution is just the wrong way to go about it.
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To mention HPC, effectively docker's business plan is equivalent to a commercial scheduler. In HPC those do exist (LSF, PBSPro, Moab) but they are mostly purchased for their UI to non-developer types, and those without that need just pick up slurm. A lot of that is informed by knowing that most HPC jobs are of a handful of off the shelf applications, and tailoring UI around those for non-programmer researchers.
Container management is not in that realm right now, and docker swarm doesn't do things in a fri
"They invented this great tech" (Score:1)
Uh... what? Docker didn't "invent" anything. They took existing Linux kernel facilities written by others and cobbled them together into a poor imitation of a concept that has been around for multiple decades.
But I guess that's the modern tech industry: if you can put enough chrome on your reinvented wheel and get a critical mass of unthinking circlejerkers to adopt it, billions of VC money can be yours!
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I will give them credit for focusing on integrating device mapper to provide snapshotting and for 'dockerhub' to have a centralized strategy for container sharing.
However, despite those being good ideas, they aren't *difficult* ideas, so it's very hard for them to milk those good ideas for a lot of money.
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Note that Docker isn't claiming that, rather an analyst at IDC, who clearly favours Kubernetes with statements like "they [Google] are the de facto industry standard", when the numbers - quoted by others in previous comments - clearly show they aren't by a long chalk.
But that's just part of being a hit piece: back up the assertion that company X is dead in the water by falsely claiming that said company was a progenitor. People then take that to mean the company itself claims that in order to foment dissent
Khaki pants (Score:4, Informative)
My bet is that... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's actually a question of legality (Score:2, Funny)
Containers cannot support an industry (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying a container speciliast company is viable is sort of like saying a specialist in fileutils (rm/cp/ls/ln) could be a company. The truth is containers are a solid technology because they are relatively straightforward.
Docker started by wanting to provide some alternative usage scenario to the stuff that LXC was providing. The hardest part of the work was the kernel namespaces, cgroups, and device mapper pieces. Docker had the admittedly good idea of focusing on more disposable application images rather than faking virtual machines. They found success because they were open and could be ubiquitous. If they had tried to be closed, an alternative would have sprung up in a matter of months (you could teach 3 college students about the C code to manipulate namespaces and have them craft a rudimentary docker alternative in a semester).
Then came the challenge of finding a path to profitability. Effectively docker was a really good uber-chroot, and that's not exactly sufficiently sophisticated to make a business out of. So they thought "multi-container management will be it!" and make swarm their commercial strategy.
The problem is, when all is said and done even that isn't exactly hard to craft, so Google came along and provided that essentially in their 'spare time'. If they hadn't bothered, Mesos would have fit the bill.
The state of container technology is such that it is actually underwhelming to use, and I mean that as a compliment. It doesn't feel like some big ordeal that warrants consulting and such, at least no more so than dealing with whatever software runs on top of that layer, which is inevitably much more complex than the effort of launching the containers. It's sort of like a mechanic specializing in only changing your oil filter, but only after you've bought all the supplies, lifted your car, and drained the oil yourself.
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docker pull yeasy/blockchain-explorer ?
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https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docke... [freebsd.org]
No competitors (Score:1)
Why not? (Score:2)
I mean, they're pretty nice pants.
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Dave Barry says the company picked the name “Dockers” because no one would buy pants under the label “Clothes For The Bigger-Butted Man”.