Previous communication:<p>> 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.<p>New communication:<p>> 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.<p>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.
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.<p>'We're sorry we mistreated you, look how small you are to us.'
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).<p>Docker's on the other hand is none of that, and full of corporate PR red flags:<p>- "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<p>- "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.<p>- 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.<p>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.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35044516</a>
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.<p>As someone affected, I'm ok with paying.<p>* I don't like feeling tricked<p>* I don't like feeling held hostage<p>* Make your changes in a manner that preceding the announcement with "SURPRISE!" wouldn't be fitting<p>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?!?
Ah, good ole Docker.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I get it, you need to monetize your software... but this is dumb.
Not sure how this changes anything.<p>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.<p>They really should have just tightened the entry criteria for their open source offering if they were so concerned about it being misused.<p><a href="https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-program-has-a-new-look/" rel="nofollow">https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-sponsored-open-source-pro...</a>
Recent and related:<p><i>Docker is deleting Open Source organisations - what you need to know</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166317</a> - March 2023 (727 comments)<p><i>Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations [pdf]</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025</a> - March 2023 (105 comments)<p><i>Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153949</a> - March 2023 (12 comments)<p>Also:<p><i>Elixir: Docker now charges open source orgs $300</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35166579</a> - March 2023 (38 comments)<p><i>Ask HN: Docker Alternatives?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171491</a> - March 2023 (5 comments)
> This impacted less than 2% of our users.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
> 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.<p>This company raised $400M+ and they cannot be arsed to implement a feature to change account types.
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.<p>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?<p>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.
Reading carefully about image deletion:<p>* "public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them"<p>* "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."<p>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.
> What are the benefits of a paid Docker subscription?<p>> Docker Pro is ideal for individual developers looking to accelerate productivity.<p>> Docker Team is ideal for small teams looking to collaborate productively.<p>> Docker Business is ideal for businesses looking for centralized management and advanced security capabilities. Visit our pricing page to learn more.<p>I'm not quite sure that answers the question, just how docker would like it's customers to self-discriminate.
Two solutions that don't seem to be mentioned:<p>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.<p>2. Run a free link redirect service: user registers <i>my-team</i> on hub.docker.com, links <i>my-team/my-image</i> with their preferred registry <i>my-registry.com</i>, client-side <i>docker pull my-team/my-image</i> resolves automagically to <i>my-registry.com/my-team/my-image</i>.
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.<p>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.<p>I have lost trust in this company.
Not much has changed then.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.
> 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.<p>Support request sent, I wish there were more clear on what "Topic" and "Severity" this kind of request falls into.<p>#HugOps to the tech support team that's going to be flooded with requests.
> How can I see if I’m affected?<p>> 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.<p>Interesting theory, but no; <i>my</i> account is paid, but I'm using third party images that are rather harder to verify.
It's almost becoming a cliche for companies to release damage control follow-ups like this after they pull a bait and switch.<p>It's always "we're sorry that we didn't <i>communicate</i> our bait and switch effectively". Not we're sorry that we pulled a bait and switch. We're sorry you <i>didn't understand</i> 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.
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)?
The key part for our project is "You can migrate from a Free Team organization to a Personal account by opening a support ticket."<p>Migrating to a free personal account will work for many small open source projects. That's what we're planning to do.
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.
> This impacted less than 2% of our users.<p>Hmm, I’m not sure how I feel about them making excuses a few sentences into what is supposed to be an apology.
> This impacted less than 2% of our users.<p>"We apologise, and also here are some our 'lie by statistics' excuses where we don't count who <i>used</i> those org repos but just the org owners"
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.<p>Then comes the crunch times, and suddenly random vendors can rug pull your entire operation.<p>Yet we keep doing it every boom time because it's so easy!
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.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>Is anyone going to fund that?<p>We have a way to do that with git (and signed commits) that covers source code.<p>Is there something that someone can build out of P2P/IFPS/? that would allow that to happen, including some form of search/identification?
> <i>...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.</i><p>What percentage of those orgs / users hosted popular docker images? Surely, 2% is a small enough number to warrant a public apology?
Can't they just idk release a list of the images that are likely to be impacted unless the owner takes action?<p>I don't care much of the business decision, it's their house.<p>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.
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.
> 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.<p>Why do you really want to kill those 2% of your users?
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.
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.
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.
Sorry, I’m already moving onto other repository options and also to `podman` as an alternative that cover 99% of my use cases.<p>I won’t be caught up againg by Docker SNAFU.
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.
Lots of people outraged here, but did any organization step up to fill this (perceived) gap?<p>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.
Edit: It looks like you can migrate from a team to a personal account:<p>> 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.
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?<p>Also, just switch to Podman already people…
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.<p>fuck docker!
"We’d also like to clarify that public images will only be removed from Docker Hub if their maintainer decides to delete them."<p>Was HN spreading fake news then?