Good read, and touches on a lot of the pain points from that era. As someone who was lurking on HN at the time during the containerization boom, I think that the key failing of dotCloud/Docker was not capitalising on Docker Swarm almost immediately. Docker Swarm was touted almost from the start but the repeated delays gave it a reputation of smoke and mirrors left people scrambling for solutions.

I also clearly remember the multiple high profile spats that 'shykes had on HN which burned a lot of bridges. At the time he had a reputation for answering lots of questions on HN which helped a lot with community building. After those bridges were burned there was no one to speak for Docker as the developer mindsets shifted slowly towards Kubernetes. IIRC the Github PRs were also a source of contention as dotCloud corporatised.

To be fair, Kubernetes was a real slog to understand at the start and had a lot of competition; it was definitely not the same level of simple, direct technical solution that Docker was.

Interesting trip down memory lane and what a pivotal technology! Regardless of the rest Docker is a true cultural phenomenon and a testament to the insight of the creators working outside of the myopia of big tech.