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Can Docker Survive Google? (bloomberg.com)
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."
First, let me state that I do NOT think a software idea patent would be a good idea.
But the entire reason why we created patents is to stop a large corporation from giving away the invention of a small company, driving them out of business.
We need a new method, someway of ensuring that if you come up with a new business idea, you get to make a profit from it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The idea of containers is sound but the tools all through the process and management chain need to be much better.
Will keep it going until the next Web 6.0 fad comes along.
Kubernetes (k8s) orchestrates containers, one of which is Docker. Docker Swarm is the proper comparison to k8s.
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.
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... to the really relevant container isolation features that were implemented in the Linux kernel.
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.
Thinstall/Thinapp existed before either of these
The originator of an idea often gets trampled by bigger outfits who can subsidize a loss-making business targeted at the little guy.
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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Only thing all this demonstrates is OSS makes great software, but lousy businesses.
Years before docker there was OpenVZ and LXC container virtualization on Linux. And in an age of salt, puppet, ansible, and chef (not to mention pre-existing cluster management for HPC) to act like your only competition giving you heartburn is Google... ludicrous.
Note that this is true only for Linux. Docker supports Windows, macOS and Solaris targets, and sort-of supports some BSD flavours. On Windows and macOS, they have ported the FreeBSD hypervisor and run a Linux VM. On Solaris, they use Zones for isolation. If the FreeBSD version is ever finished, they'll use jails.
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Just having a good idea does not give you the right to prosper in the business-world, it is all about execution. It is a market economy and you have to have both an idea and are able to execute that idea better than anyone else that might think they can do better. The company with the idea first, does get a head start - but that is all that they are comes from an idea alone.
You are right that patents have almost no place in software (unless something is truly revolution - like a compression algorithm that through ingenuity is significantly better than all the rest - something that is not obvious).
Let the markets decide.
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!
When I saw Docker in the title I thought this was about khaki pants.
Once Google knocks out Docker, in a year or two they will then announce the purchase of all the Docker IP. Then, in another year or so, they will announce the "end of life" for the project, just they've with many other products.
Wrong. It was Al Gore.
I have like a dozen pair of Docker khaki pants and they hold up very well. Would purchase again.
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.
If you want your business to survive, you have to deliver value for money and stay relevant. The blurb reads like someone who wrote a moderately novel twist on a boy meets girl story, and now is upset someone else with a more efficient printing process is writing in the same genre with similar twists.
Only a matter of time before they folded. After all, open containers are prohibited in most States...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You mean, when this is "ever finished"?
No, does not seem like jails are in use...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
for this piece of shit advertisement?=
We need blockchain containers!!!
It's time for Docker to embrace FreeBSD and get with the program. There's a market out there for more than just linux.
Google sells data. Docker, inc sells software support service. They are not competitors.
Docker is a Container platform.
Kubernetes is an orchestration (scheduling and management) layer to manage containers... docker being one of them.
They are different layers. That said, the money is in the orchestration layer because you could actually learn the container layer yourselves without paying for consultancy (that is the great thing about docker) in a day or at most a week. While you could do the orchestration yourselves too, it is managing things on a larger scale and requires a bit more setup across machines with multiple containers which is a bit more âoetroublesomeâ to play around with (thought I would say still completely doable), so organisations with timelines tend to pay for consultants to come in to get started.
I know you're more political then technological these days, but Kubernetes is an orchestration engine. Docker is an orchestration engine and container technology.
Kubernetes orchestrates docker containers.
Did everyone with a clue leave slashdot? Is this fake news too?
1. Learn what a Container is
2. Learn what Docker is (hint: itâ(TM)s not a container)
3. Learn what Kubernetes is, and how it doesnâ(TM)t compete at all with Dockerâ(TM)s core toolset, only with itâ(TM)s orchestration tools
Then, write an article. Not before then.
This article is laughable
I mean, they're pretty nice pants.
Nothing to see here. You don't need anything more and certainly don't need more hype. There's enough hype around everything "container" already.
It is sorta like how all the know-it-all 20-somethings think that "cloud" is a good thing for their privacy.
Kubernetes is a management system for containers. Dockers also wants to sell something to manage containers. But why buy the cow when Google gives the cow away for free?
FreeBSD has added IO throughput and IOPs caps per jail. https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ma...
readbps filesystem reads, in bytes per second
writebps filesystem writes, in bytes per second
readiops filesystem reads, in operations per second
writeiops filesystem writes, in operations per second
BHYVE also supports via
limit_rbps Limit guest disk read throughput to the specified bits per second.
limit_wbps Limit guest disk write throughput to the specified bits per second.
limit_riops Limit guest disk read iops to the specified number of operations per second.
limit_wiops Limit guest disk write iops to the specified number of operations per second.
These limits can be done as a total per jail or VM or even specified per device.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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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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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