There's this prevalent false position that Kubernetes is successful because of Google.<p>Yeah, Kubernetes initially learned a ton because of Borg and Google's deep investment into containers dating back a very long time. But, arguably, Kubernetes is successful because Google Let It Go. Its a true open source project, with governance by a wide number of industry advocates, underneath the Linux Foundation.<p>By comparison, Docker is a VC-backed profit-minded startup. Of course it was going to lose this race, for the same reason Windows isn't the dominant OS in the cloud.<p>Fundamentally: You can't build a hyperscale startup based on a technology. It doesn't appear to work anymore. The best case is the Docker/Kubernetes or Oracle/Postgres/MySQL case: someone else does it, maybe better, open sources it, community forms around it, you're toast. The worst case is the MongoDB/AWS or Elastic/AWS case; a cloud provider copies you, probably does it worse, but its cheaper and more integrated with the cloud, so they still win.<p>Docker was doomed; they could have been a very nice business, but the issue is taking on huge valuations and capital, scaling like mad, and then finding out you have no ground underneath your feet to support that valuation.
This article seems to be arguing that Docker’s primary downfall was being hostile to its open source community. Without having an opinion on whether that’s true, I suspect the core issue was not that but their business model and execution.<p>Before Kubernetes was the dominant container tech, they were pushing Swarm but I remember being confused about where Docker “standalone” stopped and where Swarm began. Perhaps it would have been better as a separate tool with a more clear open core model?<p>Then there was Docker Hub, whose UI was never great and which always seemed light on features.<p>I don’t recall seeing any kind of container introspection tool from them for a while either, despite others coming out.<p>Meanwhile, they represented a threat to the cloud providers if you could truly run anything in a container on any cloud. But the cloud providers all neutralized that threat by the classic “commoditizing the complement” strategy where the Docker cluster and registry tech were all either open source or commoditized.<p>Once Kubernetes emerged as the winner and de-valued Swarm while the cloud providers all offered their own Kubernetes and Docker registry offerings, I’m not sure how much more profit there was for Docker to claim.<p>Honestly, startups are hard. Sometimes really hard. It’s hard to know if a different team would have gotten different results in this space.
My experience agrees with this.<p>I'm a huge fan of Docker, I've actively taken part since the early days, attending meetups and using it actively day to day.<p>Unfortunately, when I brought several issues to GitHub, or +1'd other people's issues that were affecting the usability within our company, the attitude was very much "f* you and your problems" because Docker want things to be one way and that's how it'll be.<p>There were issues raised 4+ years ago and are still open, for solutions to problems that would have mooted a need for us to use something like K8s (which doesn't work anyway for our requirements).<p>I believe Docker locking the community out of valuable features had also done harm and (possibly) failed to be the monitiser they'd hoped for.<p>After so long, I no longer go to Docker to solve problems that could be solved in Docker (secrets anyone? without the "hacks"), and just look towards the other tools solving the problems.<p>I'll continue to use Docker, but I don't consider it a friend.
The problem i have with cubernetes is the following: I as a small developer and small server owner don't have the ressources to even get started. The first thing i see at cubernetes is a cluster. Why a cluster. Do i need to cluster my Raspberry pi's to get something out of it? Do i need to buy 3 servers just to run 5 containers?<p>In docker its easy. Download Docker. Start container. Install container manager like platformio. Done.<p>But true to the article. Docker seems very hostile towards the community and towards getting revenue. If i think about Kubernetes and Revenue i hear IBM, Red Hat. And i am too cheap of a person and too small of a customer to ever need those guys. So i will still keep using Docker.<p>And because i know more about Docker i will probably try to use it at work as well. Easy as that.<p>But i am open to suggestions.
Can anyone offer a good guide to DevOps for people who don't directly use these tools but work with engineers who do and would like to learn more? The whole ecosystem of servers, cloud infrastructure (and all of the different offerings there), Docker, Kubernetes, CICD tools etc is a bit overwhelming to get into.
Maybe this isn't quite the perspective the article's taking—but damn near no one visibly wept for LXC when Docker stomped all over it in terms of “what people think containers just Are”. And now the news asks why I don't weep for them? Live by the stomp, die by the stomp.
I don't get why k8s is the dominant scheduler. If you have a 3 ~ 6 person platform team that can set one up, or build a secure terraform of CFN codebase to establish an AWS/EKS system, they can be nice. But I've also worked at DCOS/marathon shops where it worked just as well.<p>The trouble with all these schedulers is they can't go from just one node (where scheduling and processes run on the same node .. and minikube is a hack; not a production system) to 100. You can't just setup a small k8s, and then add a node, and another node, and scale up. You go from a single docker system, to a big managed k8s system.<p>There needs to be more competition. It's the same deal with the dominance of systemd as the only system layer. Only the small startups seem to be using more lightweight stuff like Nomad, k3s, RancherOS (Rancher is mostly going the managed k8s solution anyway; even though they have their own k3s implementation).<p>A running k8s system can be okay, but there is a lot of room for improvement (in terms of making it simpler). Both DCOS and k8s seem to waste a lot of resources. Docker could have competed in this space, but everyone complained about all the bugs in Swarm and it never really went anywhere.<p>I did a writeup on container orchestration systems late last year:<p><a href="https://penguindreams.org/blog/my-love-hate-relationship-with-docker-and-container-orchestration-systems/" rel="nofollow">https://penguindreams.org/blog/my-love-hate-relationship-wit...</a>
For a very long time there was a gaping security hole in Docker: anyone who could run a container could mount anything on the underlying host as root. This says to me that Docker (the company) don’t really consider any use cases beyond “fooling around on a personal laptop”. Meanwhile other container projects took seriously from day 1 that they would need to run in production.<p>Docker (the company) certainly helped to raise the profile of containerisation but they invented very little of it and did a poor job of implementing what they did do. Good riddance to them.
In my experience having worked at two developer tools companies where we wanted to partner and co-market products, Docker would never pick up the phone. There was definitely a “we don’t need you attitude” whenever I approached them and I had the same experience repeated to me by friends at other companies trying to do the same thing.
I think the reason they failed is that they tried to make a platform for micro services but micro services is an anti pattern, people really just wanted containerisation.
Companies don't have feelings. The only ones weeping are the VCs that invested into Docker :-D<p>Docker played its role and introduced the majority developers to containerization. This is a major success for the industry.
Whenever the topic of building online open source communities comes up I feel compelled to share the work of the great Pieter Hintjens, the guy who wrote zero MQ. He wrote a book about this topic which I thought was quite good: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30121783-social-architecture" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30121783-social-architec...</a>
I also feel sorry for Docker, in a way. Was it their arrogance, or just incompetence?<p>The came up with this amazing tool, that lot of companies started using, but they did not have a business strategy on how to make money in a long term. They tried to keep up (Docker Swarm, Docker Hub Premium, Tutum, Moby, Docker Community vs Docker Enterprise etc). But at the end they just seem like they don't really know how to approach it.
I jumped on the container bandwagon late and immediately fell in love with Docker. It built on my existing skill set so I was quickly able to get something up and running.<p>Then I started tinkering with Docker Compose and for a while things were great. But after a while I started running into issues. Compose felt artificially crippled. No secrets? No health checks? Pushing me towards Docker Swarm?<p>Eventually I just sucked it up and switched to Kubernetes even though I think it's overkill for my applications.
What's interesting, to me, about Docker as a company perhaps not doing well is how that'll impact Microsoft.<p>Microsoft have done a <i>load</i> of work on getting containers running well on Windows servers and that work relies on Docker EE as the container runtime engine (you get a free Docker EE license to run on Windows servers AFAIK)<p>If Docker get bought up (by someone other than Microsoft), then that would seem to possibly place Microsoft's container efforts at risk...
The only thing Docker is now useful for is Docker Desktop. Unlike other desktop container software, it actually works on locked down machines in enterprise environments.<p>K8s can run on any CRI-compatible runtime, and IBM/RedHat don't even want you to install Docker on RHEL8.
K8s is a “datacenter operating system”, just like VMWare’s own VSphere, or Mesos, Mosix, etc. These solutions also compete for mindshare with mainframe solutions like IBM’s; and with “control planes” like OpenStack, Canonical’s Landscape, or (I think?) Microsoft’s System Center. This space is very, very profitable.<p>None of this applies to Docker itself. Docker is “just” a virtualization technology. Sure, Docker Swarm <i>exists</i>, but at this point it’s mostly used as a shimming UI for connecting the Docker client and daemon to the abstractions mentioned above, not a clustering solution in its own right. Swarm lost in the DCOS market. And the market for pure virtualization solutions isn’t anywhere near the market for DCOSes.
A little OT, but is there anything remotely competitive with k8s these days? By "competitive", I mean: good feature set, thriving community, active development.<p>I still use Docker Swarm for small scale stuff, and am pretty happy with it - it's simple, easy to use and doesn't eat resources. But it very much feels like Docker have given up on it.<p>I'm particularly interested to know if there is anything <i>simpler</i> than k8s that's competitive?
For the same reason that no one weeps for a company that markets hammers even if it invented a new way to hold a hammer and raised lots of money because of it. We do not care about hammers, we just use them when we need to hit something. Our customers do not care about hammers either, they care about the result that we deliver.
Docker sold its soul for money at the cost of its core product. The second you take as much money as they did so you can have your luxury box at AT&T or whatever else I’m going to find it increasingly hard to sympathize with your future mistakes.
I regret the time and money I spent thinking about learning Docker. I'm sure containers solve somebody's problems, but it's not any problems that I have.
It's minor and maybe I'm being petty, but my sympathy for Docker ended the moment they forced you to register an account and log in to download Docker CE.
The first and only experience I had with Docker as a company was requiring me to sign up to download their mac osx client. They seem to have since changed that policy but it really made me resent them, and made them feel pretty unfriendly.
>Kubernetes "was operation hardened internally at Google<p>Is this true? Isn't kubernetes "based" on work done at google but also a complete rewrite.
Why cry at all? Isn't this the point of open source?<p>Can't the same be said for Git? Linux? Python? (That they didn't make the creator billions, and the creator is fine with that)
This article is real rich coming from a guy who works at AWS. The amount of absurd hubris and doublespeak entering this community unchecked is shocking to me.
Ugh, Google in the middle, please change the following URL:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiShovJrrvkAhU8FzQIHe7GCHEQzPwBCAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techrepublic.com%2Farticle%2Fwhy-doesnt-anyone-weep-for-docker%2F&psig=AOvVaw3uqDkT8mg8UfnHaiOmd7aL&ust=1567830683958295" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiS...</a><p>..to:<p><a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-doesnt-anyone-weep-for-docker/" rel="nofollow">https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-doesnt-anyone-weep-...</a><p>EDIT: The article itself is quite interesting, on the rise of Kubernetes, its adoption by VMWare, and the reason why Docker failed to capture market value as much as it could have.