Docker Raises $15M
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Just so you know I conzider Hacker News to be a key part in Docker's success. Your feedback, both positive and negative, made us feel like we weren't crazy and were building something that mattered. I hope in the end you will feel we live up to the expectations :)
We have lots of really cool things in store this year, I hope you will like them.
Happy hacking on behalf of the entire Docker team and contributors.
Regardless, I'd love to hear about your experience with Docker and NGS pipeline work. Looked at your profile but there was no email. Shoot me a note if you want to chat (email is in my profile).
I mean seriously you really want a single vendor owning the base OS of all servers ?
Hint: Boot2Docker is actually what you want.
During our alpha period, Chaos Monkey (i.e. random reboots) is built in and will give you plenty of opportunities to test out systemd.[1]
Great. While I understand why they do this, I don't want to have to setup a cluster with automatic failover just to try it out.
And then there is etcd. I'd love to use etcd - all I want is a minimal Docker image with etcd installed. When I looked, it seemed like I had to either build it myself, or use a CoreOS image.
I know it's alpha software, but that isn't a great experience.
Boot2Docker[2] OTOH: one 24 M image, burn it to a USB stick, boot it (in about 5 seconds!) and now you have the perfect Dockerhost.
Hope that helps.
We have an automatic build of an etcd container on the docker index if that helps you out as well: https://index.docker.io/u/coreos/etcd/
So what's the $15m going to be used for?
Given that Docker is licensed under Apache 2.0 which allows the venture backed Docker Corp. to create a closed proprietary version of the software... will outside contributors be compensated?
Is this the reason why Docker isn't GPL?
http://blog.docker.io/2014/01/docker-closes-15-m-series-b-fu...
Quoting from that:
"While Docker itself will always remain free and open source, we are busy gearing up for the launch of both hosted services around Docker and commercial support for Docker."
No :) If we released a closed-source version we would get forked in a instant. It would be an extremely stupid thing for us to do.
We've stated repeatedly that Docker inc. will make money by 1) offering support and professional services to enterprise customers, primarily through channel partners like Red Hat and others; and 2) offering hosted managed services for things like image hosting, orchestration, container tracking etc. Since we have been operating a PaaS at large scale for several years now, we know how to sell hosted services and it makes sense for us to focus on that.
Ben (our CEO) gives more details in this blog post: http://blog.docker.io/2014/01/docker-closes-15-m-series-b-fu...
You have it backwards. If it was GPL, that would prevent other people from creating closed proprietary versions of their software. GPL or AGPL would prevent competition. Since they are the copyright owner they get unrestricted use to the software even if the rest of us had to follow the GPL.
Have you guys looked at targeting the enterprise market? Lots of enterprises that I'm talking to are looking into building their own private clouds for their SOA, and Docker could make that much easier.
From what I've seen on the technical side you just need rock-solid stability (or a strategy to achieve that via distributed architecture) and good management tools. Meat-space requires more work/investment (support, training, certification etc).
Are you open to, indifferent, or against other hosting providers offering hosted Docker solutions?
So far we have been incredibly grateful for all of the interest and all of the amazing projects that are out there delivering real value with Docker today. The ecosystem continues to surprise and delight.
Please get in touch (nick@docker.com) if this is something you're interested in exploring. I'm also hiring if these are conversations you'd like to be having with others.
There is actually someone experimenting with Jails support already (can't remember his irc handle atm). If you want to come by irc or open a github issue, we can put you in touch.
PS: Any plans to support other architectures?
Without inside information you have no idea if this is true or not. It may very well not be. Facebook raised over 2 Billion prior to their IPO and never gave up control. $XXm Investment != Control.
I think it comes down to the personalities of the leadership, and where they want to take the projects. But it's a crying shame that OpenBSD is struggling. Not related at all to Docker, but a shame none the less.
I can give 100k to docker and expect to get back 200k. If I give that money to OpenBSD I'm expecting a general "the world may be better" and a loss of 100k.
While a nice thing, this is not what I'd want people managing my money to do.
I think that with the proper service infrastructure on top of their open source development model, OpenBSD could also bring in 200k on a 100k investment. But OpenBSD would have to be pushed and marketed as Docker has been, and the service side organized as a for-profit organization.
It's a nice way to say that OpenBSD is a failure because its Glorious Leader is a dick.
Think of it this way: we (the creators of an open-source project) have built for our project an infrastructure capable of supporting its long-term development and success without falling victim to the "openbsd effect". We hijacked for ourselves a venture-backed company and are experimenting with a symbiotic relationship where both the project and the business win without corrupting each other. We get financial, legal and marketing "artillery" in the form of a corporate structure which is dedicated to the success of the project without distorting it. We have large stakeholder (me) who is also the maintainer of the open-source project. We have a CEO (Ben Golub) with a track record of incredible success in general, of successfully managing an open-source company in particular and with a reputation of doing business in an honest and trustworthy way. We have investors with a track record of being patient, seeing the big picture and backing open-source companies and their creators in a sincere way. These guys could have fired me at any point of our transition to this model, and didn't.
So, sure, we got money "casually" (I'll leave that battle for another day), and OpenBSD struggled to get basic funding. And obviously, OpenBSD and Docker are not in the same league as open-source projects (although I hope one day they will be).
But, respectfully, I think this is more than "another startup gets $XXM". We are experimenting with a new model for the funding of open-source. One where the original innovators get to capture some of the value they created, fueling even more innovation in a virtuous circle of "innovation -> better product -> more money -> more innovation".
To me personally, were we to succeed, that would be a welcome change from the current situation, where the initial inventors are trampled by savvier entrepreneurs, who race to the local maximum of the most profitable derivative business model with the highest barriers to entry, and proceed to not reinvest their profits in the original invention, thwarting the virtuous circle. For example, Xensource produced the open-source hypervisor and we got Amazon EC2. Linus produced Git and we got Github. I think these products are great and useful - but they are a local maximum. With the raw material of git, hypervisors and a commodity open-source operating system, we could have produced so much more aggregate wealth!
At Docker we want to be both git and github. We're open-source people first, but we know how to sell a saas product and run it at scale. We know how to raise money and build a profitable business with that money. And that profit gets directly reinvested in the original innovation - Docker.
And I think that's the future of open-source: if we as a community want to see less "OpenBSD episodes", we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and go about building real business value on top of our inventions. Otherwise others will, and we'll only have ourselves to blame.
I'm also building an open source project that I want to avoid the "openbsd effect" and sustain itself, more like the Linux kernel.
I have a company that I'm using as a vehicle to bootstrap this project. The company sells services and acts as an example for others to start offering similar services (ideally including Redhat etc one day). To play it safe I don't allow the company to have any intellectual property and I don't sell any equity.
The idea of the company as a vehicle rather than an asset has been a powerful one for me.
It should go without saying that I don't think this is the only route for supporting open-source. Linux comes to mind as perhaps the most successful open-source project of all time, and it is backed by a non-profit foundation funded by member companies. (for example Docker inc. is a small member of the foundation, so a small fraction of the $15m we raised will pay for a small fraction of the salary of a core linux maintainer).
That seems very optimistic (excuse my cynicism).
"Casually" is more of an observation of HN, as not a day goes by without someone getting millions in funding, but I'm aware of how not casual the whole approach to getting that much bank is and how much work is actually involved.
docker does in fact live in the real world and play by its rules, it's not a bad thing, objectively, only an idiot wouldn't. If you play your cards right, you'll make money, won't ever need to beg for donations and will do just fine becoming the new standard.
OpenBSD tries to live in an idea, which is close to my heart and I imagine close to anyone, who grew up toying with kernels and working on distros. The recent donation thing was like a reminder that Santa's not real and there is no magical fairy land, where just putting your head down and doing what you believe is the right thing for the benefit of everyone, without thinking about money, will be rewarded.
Having grown up in a family of "starving artists" like they say, I see a lot of parallels between open-source development and, say, music, painting, dancing etc. There are many people who produce art as a "gift" to society, without financial motives. This almost always comes with a tension between the quality and intensity of your work and how you will earn a living. Perhaps you have the luxury of not requiring payment for your work, because you have another source of income - but then you might be limited in the time and energy you can invest in your art. Or conversely, you wish to focus your entire time and energy on your work, but find out that securing funding from your artistic work (whether royalties, donations, salary or grants) quickly becomes a job of its own - it is common for artists to feel that the grind of securing money for their work has become their primary job. Some discover they have a knack for it, or just get lucky, and find immense commercial success. There is a commonly held notion that commercial success is inversely proportional to intrinsic artistic value. But of course it's hard to know for sure since that is such a subjective thing to measure. Is Justin Bieber's art "less good" than the local rock band I watched last night? It depends who you ask :)
So why is it difficult for artists, sometimes immensely talented and critically appreciated artists, to secure funding? Obviously a complex and immense question. In some societies the notion of paying someone for art is inexistant, because everyone produces art on a daily basis as part of their culture. In our society, it is accepted to pay for art as a service, but only to a point, and following rules that can be hard to decipher because they rely on guessing other people's emotions, like fashion or the capital markets.
At the end of the day, I think part of the problem is that art, like writing open-source code, is an enjoyable activity. People like to do it. Many people turn out to be good at it. Some people even pay for the privilege of doing it. Which means it will always be a buyer's market.
What do BSD jails have to do with Docker? Also, what is the adoption rate of users using jails?
I'm not sure that I understand your point -- people place a value on things but that doesn't mean anything that makes less money is any less important.
What is the return on investment for that 100k? I don't see the disconnect as the OpenBSD doesn't have a revenue stream.
This is one of the reasons Red Hat felt comfortable betting on it so quickly - and you should expect other major industry players to folluw suit this year :)
As one geek to another, the thing which stops me from Dockering up my entire infrastructure in February is that: of that NxN compatibility matrix that Docker will some day liberate me from, I feel like I'm going to be the first production system in a lot of the cells, I will have to replace my existing cobbled-together infrastructure which I know to be borderline functional with hand-rolled work to Dockerize it, and I figure that when there are inevitably bugs I will be the one to weep tears of blood about them.
When this is no longer true, I'm so there.
So, we'll simply work our buts off to make the risk/reward more and more appealing for you... And in the meantime we would love to go over your particular stack and tell you how far off we are. Apparently we can afford a team of solutions engineers to do that now :)
If you're interested feel free to ping me at solomon@docker.com. I would be honored to explore your cobbled-together infrastructure!
I think you'll find a lot of core pieces of infrastructure end up being Dockerized for you.
A lot of people are actively using Docker right now. For instance I'm building https://reesd.com on it (i.e. I don't have a prior system that I replace). Getting a few bugs from Docker is not different to me than getting a few bugs from my own systems. I write my integration tests and move along.
Other people are further along the road building a lot of different things, trying a lot of different ideas. I would think that unless you're doing something radically different, a lot of ground has already been covered (and will be covered until you have completely switched to Docker).
Another reason I was not afraid of Docker is that it is built around existing pieces. For instance some people say "Docker is just a script around the lxc tools, what's the point". That, in my opinion, is reassuring. If I need to, I will be able to drop to the next layer, or another similar project will take over.
So I think it is already/almost no longer true.
@shykes: What would convince me is one or two blog posts from respected members of the community (patio11 comes to mind :-) where they detail a successful transition to use Docker in their infrastructure.
Not all companies have the benefit of being in such a position, and we're working hard to make Docker adoption a possibility there by offering Services (through partners) and Support (through us) around it.
We will not be the ones to make the judgement of when we've hit that level of maturity, but we will be publishing use cases / white papers / details about people who believe we have.
What I would encourage you to do is to start thinking about it and take advantage of the fact that we have a vested interest in making your project successful. Get in touch, tell us about your needs, and help make Docker better by making sure your use case is on track for being rock solid.
I run your standard Heroku/PG/RoR web-stack app. Is anyone else using Docker in that environment? I was vaguely thinking we could set up a Vagrant + Docker combo for our development team to manage dependencies of gems and native apps and whatnot. Is that how Docker is used? Would getting set up on Docker now make an eventual transition to, say, AWS or self-hosting later easier?
I'd love to hear examples from how people with a similar tech stack are using Docker.
* CoreOS/Vagrant
* Docker containers with basic infrastructure (eg LAMP/Ruby+Postgres)
* Containers 'forked' for each client (and company project)
* Central container repo for the team to use
As soon as CoreOS is ready for production we're going to look at using it for deployment.
We might not be using it 100% correctly, but so far it's nothing short of amazing. The basic 'git for OS' flow I get out if it makes me smile every time. Dockerfiles are way, way, way easier than Chef, Puppet or Ansibke, and the central repo is a synch to picture and imagine in comparison.
Are you putting the whole stack in one big container and running one container per Vagrant VM? Or are you spreading a client stack across multiple containers?
One question I have for Solomon -- do you guys have a product roadmap on the site anywhere ? As in, what features are planned etc. and by what release/time ?
Yes, we are actually working on exposing our high-level roadmap publicly. We are currently testing a public Trello board, but the choice of tool is not yet final.
All of this is being discussed openly on the #docker and #docker-dev IRC channels on Freenode. Feel free to jump in and say hi!
My answer was Docker and Oculus VR.
Seriously, if MS can be persuaded that this appraoch is beneficial for their ecosystem too, then everyone is a winner!
But yes, speaking as a shared webhoster devops kinda guy, I agree, it would be nice to have containers on Windows too.
Great job Solomon and team. I am all for you guys!
It could be that this is all Docker Inc's prerogative, which is fine. I just don't see it spelled out.
And in general the rest of that hack/ directory. We use a process that is completely open and not at all limited to Docker, inc. Several core maintainers (and countless contributors) are not employed at Docker inc.
Generally speaking the reference for how we organize is Linux.
Why would I "Dockerize" my infrastructure, and what benefits and challenges does that entail? I mostly do fairly simple RoR web apps that run on something like Linode.