I see this kind of cynicism / snark all the time on HN (especially when it comes to Docker) but is it really warranted? Surely it's the rare exception? I've never met senior people who couldn't understand the naming difference between the open source version of a thing and the enterprise-branded version. Or a CEO or President. They're not morons.
This seems like cheap shots for upvotes. Or am I wrong?
The conversation usually goes like this with my folk:
I get it, Moby is the OSS version and can be easily stood up and you don't see the need for extra cost. I'm glad you're trying to reduce expenses, but I don't mind paying for 24x7 Enterprise Support and it gives me piece of mind and priority escalation support.
Basically, I don't mind paying extra for a get out of jail free card if a whole swarm is offline.... I can tell the CEO we have the vendor partner engaged with a critical ticket and she can have piece of mind too. So, let's quote out the Enterprise version of Docker and evaluate the TCO of both solutions.
It's not a "cheap shot", and it's not for "upvotes", it's just an observation about the nature of this change being non-technical, related to messaging.
- a CIO
Platinum support means you can get C-level executives on the line.
Reputation and counter party risk all factor into evaluation and cost of support as well
That's "on the _premises_".
You might not care about this, and many don't. You're running the risk that the maintainers won't pack up shop and stop maintaining the project, and that you & your team will need to inherit the project.
Other way of looking at it, is that if you're a business, you always should pay for your software, even if it's open source. Because you will one way or another: through your team, or through the risk that free riding brings.
It is a FACT that individuals are unable to use the term "Docker" on anything they would like to create and share with others. This has been enforced with takedown notices and legal entities getting involved in "protecting" the Docker brand, on Docker's behalf. This, in and of itself makes sense, given Docker is a private company with a significant amount of private investment behind it, with expected returns on protecting that investment. It has used that investment well to further build the brand, as you indicate here.
However. Docker is also an idea which is one of taking a "software container" and starting it somewhere, running it for a bit, twiddling on it in a variety of ways, then moving it somewhere else where someone else can do that too, without too much operations headache as you do so. Again, it's the IDEA of this that matters, not whether it is technically true or not. The idea simply leverages the concepts of writing, deploying and running code and smears them across a the vast resources of which the Internet is comprised.
I've seen the gleam in people's eyes when they talk about a ubiquitous computing infrastructure, of which it will run their code, without question, and never, ever breaks. Irrational beliefs are still beliefs, and sometimes it is necessary to also believe they are rational ones in order to get things done. We're all busy, and the Internet requires a lot of us to get more done in the future. People need the idea of Docker to get project's interest raised, approved, and put into production to get more things done.
This is where Docker's dissonance comes in, and does so fairly heavily handed. Docker is here to make money. They will do that at the expense of all other things, given their purpose is to preserve shareholder value first. That includes changing the idea that everyone holds about ubiquitous computing. That's not to say that shareholder value isn't tied to consumer value and completely rational, but it can also become a vicious circle very quickly when company values are prioritized over consumer values at any expense, or vice versa even.
Personally, this is why I'm not a big of traditional investments in infrastructure technologies. While I do think that traditional investments have been a great help to the growth of technology in the past, it is my belief we are going to continue to run into increasing challenges attempting to rationalize arguments for shareholder value vs. user's best interests when it comes to infrastructure. And, to make it even more challenging, I think most times the users don't realize they are trusting these offerings in an implicit way, which makes their view on matters highly irrational. That is to say, irrationality indicates additional work must be done to resolve the truths of who and what to trust. This is made difficult by applying that irrationality to the very systems on which we base trust.
I don't want to live in a reality where we are having to constantly question the trustworthiness, or irrationality, of our infrastructure.
I don't have a great suggestion for how to fix these types of issues other than proposing a radical change in infrastructure business models. I do have a suggestion on how to do that, but it will make it completely irrational for traditional investors to consider, which would limit the adoption of it, even if it got going. A catch 22, if there ever was one.
This seems to be a much higher level construct , like PaaS or Lambda, than what Docker provides.
Docker was more of a bottom-up wake up call to those upper layers that lower layer technology usability still matters.
Basically I wouldn't ignore it.
So to me it seems fair but depending on your experience I could see it as a cheap shot for upvotes as well.
Here is an old saying: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" - neatly illustrating the issue. I have met _many_ senior people that don't understand these naming differences. They tend to be the bosses of the CEO and CTO's
If you were already migrating to Docker, now you have to explain that the project name changed overnight without explanation, and it's hurting your credibility pretty bad. It's also gonna bring a lot of confusion onto everyone for a very long time.
The three points seem to be, cheaper, more secure, and the other guys are dumb.