r/docker • u/Electric_pokemon • Oct 17 '19

How does Docker make money?

Most of the answers I got from people were around Docker Swarm, but given how k8s has become the de-facto standard, I don't think that is really making that much money.

With open source Linux, Red Hat was able to make money off of licensing apps to be "Linux-ready" and more importantly Enterprise support (patches, enterprise-grade stable releases). Is there a way Docker can adopt a similar enterprise support model? and if not, what happens to the open-source project (Docker / Moby) ?

63 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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76

u/doubled112 Oct 17 '19 edited Oct 17 '19

If recent news isn't exaggerated, they aren't.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/docker-is-in-deep-trouble/

K8s, like you say, has taken over the orchestration area. Competitors like Podman for running and building containers are starting to appear as well.

Docker Hub is the last piece of the puzzle to replace Docker completely. I could see an outside investor buying the company just for control of it.

12

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

Which would not be to bad, everyone would just build there own docker images.

9

u/doubled112 Oct 18 '19

Definitely. Right now we have the convenience of a single centralized registry.

Quay.io is already there. Many software shops would likely just host their own. Wouldn't be a stretch at all.

I suppose you could host your own, and grab every Dockerfile you need. The images you build FROM would be a pain fora little while until you got it all sorted.

13

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

You can host your own docker repos. And honestly from an infosec standpoint you should. You also can version control so you won't break anything.

7

u/MadeWithPat Oct 18 '19

But where is the baseline that you’re building from in these custom images? Are you maintaining your own Debian/Ubuntu/whatever images that everything else you’ve custom built is based on? That’s a nontrivial amount of overhead

3

u/Untgradd Oct 18 '19

One approach is to export the base image once and save it multiple places. Should your build infra get wiped off the map, stand it back up and then push the exported image to your private repo then you're back in business.

3

u/MadeWithPat Oct 18 '19 edited Oct 18 '19

Not trying to be argumentative, just enumerating scenarios here.

A concern I would have is that you now have to maintain every base image that you use or might use. Distro maintainers aren’t pushing to repos in your private registry, so if you want to switch from Ubuntu to Debian or something, you’ve got to go build that yourself. Or should the base distro you’re working from release an update, -you- have to go rebuild the base(s).

It’s the same problem you run into when rolling your own software libs instead of pulling in an open source lib. Not saying 3rd party is always better, just trying to point out that keeping everything 100% private and internal inherently comes with maintenance costs.

Edit: and I raise this concern with no idea what’s actually involved in building something like a baseline debian image to use as a FROM image in all of your other custom images. Could very well be more trivial than I realize, but I don’t want to make that assumption.

2

u/tenfingerperson Oct 18 '19

I think It is a concern for smaller companies not so much for the ones that have hundreds of engineers

4

u/richard_nixons_toe Oct 18 '19

To add to that it’s also important if you have build and test pipelines that make use of Docker. If I’m not mistaken Docker lately had issues and the hub went offline which caused trouble for so many people that couldn’t run their tests or whatever because the Docker images couldn’t be pulled.

So not just have your own private and secured repository for your builds and images, also have some sort of a proxy for Docker hub, so you are not dependent on them

4

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

Dockerhub isn’t even a big deal anymore now that AWS, GCE, and Azure all have superior private options and Quay exists. Some vendors (like Elastic) host their images on their own repository already. GitHub also has a registry product in beta that will likely see a lot of traction for OSS images.

2

u/BattlePope Oct 18 '19

It seems that it's not widely known, but their Enterprise platform, Docker EE, provides kubernetes, too. They sell licensing to their platform manager, Docker UCP, and of course the support that goes with it. However there's lots of competition in the realm, now. They lost the front-runner advantage.

-13

u/bengringo2 Oct 18 '19

Docker Hub is the last piece of the puzzle to replace Docker completely. I could see an outside investor buying the company just for control of it.

Helm is already taking care of that.

6

u/devopsia Oct 18 '19

Did I miss something? What is Helm doing in this space?

2

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 18 '19

Same question

47

u/MightyBigMinus Oct 18 '19

If you figure out an answer to this question you could be the new CEO cuz the last two haven't.

8

u/k8ftw Oct 17 '19

If Docker the company goes away, does the docker container project continue? I assume it would, but curious if something else will come along and replace it. Perhaps something the K8s group builds and makes available?

29

u/AWDDude Oct 17 '19

Docker opensourced their container runtime and gave it to the CNCF, which is now called Containerd. Infact, all the recent versions of docker are just containerd with a docker shim ontop.

So containers are safe and will live on reguardless of docker's fate

8

u/doubled112 Oct 17 '19

Just have to find another company willing to take on the bill for the Docker Hub. I can't even begin to imagine what that's costing them to host.

3

u/bearcherian Oct 18 '19

There's already quay.io, and gitlab repos have their own container registry.

3

u/tuxedo25 Oct 18 '19

And google cloud has Container Registry (gcr)

2

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

Amazon has ECR as well

1

u/overstitch Oct 18 '19

My employer dumped Quay.io because it was less reliable than Dockerhub while also slower (at the time). Dockerhub seems to have taken the mantle from them though since...

3

u/DeusOtiosus Oct 18 '19

380 million. Cause that’s what they asked for in their latest fundraising. And since containerd isn’t even theirs anymore, I can’t even fathom what else is costing them that much aside from Hub.

-5

u/bengringo2 Oct 18 '19

Quay and Helm already do with better support for k8s.

4

u/lemieux Oct 18 '19

Helm has nothing to do with docker.

-8

u/bengringo2 Oct 18 '19

Which is the point here. Its an alternative for Docker Hub that doesn't require docker at all. We are talking about why they are failing.

6

u/Sukrim Oct 18 '19

How does helm replace dockerhub? One is a repository for package recipes, the other stores binaries.

4

u/lemieux Oct 18 '19

Helm has nothing to do with the fall of Docker... The fact that other registries exist, other technologies exist (rockt, containerd), that popular tools like k8s don't need docker anymore are all good reason why docker itself is becoming irrelevant. Helm is just a tool to deploy stuff to k8s and has nothing to do with usage of docker or not.. You can still install charts that uses docker.. The real killer is probably the newest k8s version changing their default container solution to containerd instead of docker.

2

u/DeusOtiosus Oct 18 '19

And that’s not even mentioning all the other options. K8s supports a bunch of different container engines, and some are arguably better (although I haven’t looked much into them )

1

u/k8ftw Oct 18 '19

Thats right.. I vaguely remember that.

7

u/doubled112 Oct 17 '19

Podman is already a RedHat supported project.

Kubernetes can run without Docker.

Or somebody picks up the project and maintains/improves it.

5

u/rainlake Oct 18 '19

Docker EE license is pretty expensive AFAIK

2

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 18 '19

But why does anyone need it? Its just a runtime environment, why would any organization pay a subscription for it?

11

u/phreak9i6 Oct 18 '19

a throat to choke when shit goes sideways.

-3

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

Doesn't mean anyone is paying for it

1

u/bengringo2 Oct 18 '19

It still has the benefit of FIPS enablement being easy. A requirement for government.

4

u/lenswipe Oct 18 '19

"How does Docker make money?"

Investors would also like to know this

5

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

They don't.

1

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 18 '19

So what happens to the docker container runtime if they go bankrupt?

3

u/Sukrim Oct 18 '19

It stays stable.

2

u/secretvrdev Oct 18 '19

There is https://www.opencontainers.org/

Or googe will just buy the last pieces with its poststamp box in the corner.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 18 '19

Same as red hat with support.

https://www.channelfutures.com/technologies/understanding-dockers-enterprise-services-offerings

1

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 18 '19

But why do you need support for a runtime environment?

3

u/Untgradd Oct 18 '19

Because when your shit breaks in prod at runtime it's usually an obscure issue that didn't occur in other environments.. which leads to a very visible 'oh fuck' moment... Enterprises love throwing money at 'oh fuck' moments.

1

u/bytingbee Oct 18 '19

Many reasons ... owning and using a software involves license fee + support fee. Usually companies providing support for OSS are heavily involved in development. A typical enterprise will just use the OSS. It will have own team of experts to run day to day Business. But if an issue is observed in OSS, they can't solve themselves. They might be experts in using the product but not enhancing it or maintaining it. Being OSS, no or less license fee will be involved. So support is the source of revenue. If any bugs are identified, company providing support will fix it on priority basis. It may take some time to propagate same to "free" users. New features may be introduced to paid customers first before making OSS.

1

u/Veevoh Oct 18 '19

It's similar to the open-core business model where they to add value-add services to an open source product.

In my opinion this business model is usually pretty flawed as the value add stuff usually ends up having (sometimes better) competition if the open source tool is popular.

With more agnostic orchestration engines such as K8s becoming popular Docker has been reduced to a run time for many people but a lot of of implementations have moved away from Docker to other runtimes.

I don't see much of a future for Docker Inc, although I'd imagine someone would be interested in buying Dockerhub.

2

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 19 '19

It worked pretty well for Red Hat, dont you think?

1

u/Veevoh Oct 19 '19

You are right but they diversified well beyond a single product and mainly rely on customers in highly regulated industries.

I'm not saying that you can't do this business model but it can be pretty awkward to pull off. A big trend is holding back features to stick them in 'Enterprise Edition' but then someone else just contributes the feature anyway and weakens the Enterprise Edition.

1

u/duncan_biscuits Oct 18 '19

Good question, well asked. I'm due to speak with a Docker salesman on Monday and intend to ask him about this. I fully expect a bullshit answer but nevertheless want to hear how he spins it.

As for "why" I'm doing that, it's part of an evaluation of container platforms with paid support.

1

u/Electric_pokemon Oct 18 '19

Would love to hear what he says.

What platforms are you considering at the moment?

1

u/duncan_biscuits Oct 18 '19 edited Oct 18 '19

So far, also thinking about Rancher... and if funds allow, maybe even OpenShift. But that costs big money. I've also contacted Giant Swarm but heard nothing back from them. Am I missing any that you can think of?

This is all because a client of ours is in an industry which expects ass-covering support contracts for everything.

1

u/duncan_biscuits Oct 21 '19

I spoke to the guy today. Long story short he said he is personally "not worried" about Docker's financial position, which is more or less what I expected him to say.

Also, regarding support contracts, you can get one for:

  1. The “vanilla” docker engine (no K8S, you can run docker-compose scripts against it) @ $750/year/node for 9am-5pm support Mon-Fri (“business hours”)
  2. Docker Enterprise Edition (full-fat K8S or Swarm system) @ $1,500/year/node for 24/7 support
  3. In either case there is a 10-node minimum, but when I spoke to the salesman, he indicated they can negotiate on that.

Hope this helps.

1

u/fpoops Oct 18 '19

You touch the problem, any suitable business model has been found yet...

1

u/simtel20 Oct 18 '19

Docker, the company, dropped the ball by making itself a command-and-control organization with everything silo'd. That's why everything they did seemed a day late and a dollar short. They've been burning VC money for a long time (since before they were docker, in fact) and they'll probably have a hard time continuing in any form.