Easy answer to the partnerships... Money to pay their employees... and influence from the partners on the future development of the project.
1) Money is definitely not the case - docker is well capitalized. A special benefit of being in that situation is you don't have to do unnatural things like partner for money.
2) We welcome contributions from everyone, partners or not. Influence is gained by real contribution.
The reason we build partnerships is to ensure a few main things
#1 (and the biggest) Docker is made available on a wide variety of platforms, allowing developers and admins to work in native environments instead of fork-lifting to another just to try it out.
#2 Enable a network of services, products, systems integrator, IT vendors, etc. to have support, training, and other necessary things as they offer docker features in their products. This allows those who do not make containers and container services the core of their business, and instead focus on making/solving different problems.
I am more than happy to walk you or anyone else through partner strategy at any time. I'm easy to find.
Are you willing to share the contract details involved in these partner agreements? What do partners have to agree to in order to be an official partner?
Of course I can't do that, but I can talk about the different contract types thematically in an appropriate forum, absolutely.
> What do partners have to agree to in order to be an official partner?
1) Not to fork the Docker project (in the negative context, i.e use Docker but call it something else) 2) To use the Docker API (and not a derivative implementation)
As a general, official technology partner, that's pretty much it. And, most of the time, we're more than happy to promote (especially smaller partners) to that status in good faith without any paper work.
> What about prioritization, you may ask?
The list I provided above in terms of recruitment/opportunity criteria? That's prioritized.
My team has to prioritize the tremendous interest from some of the largest as well as some of the smallest companies in the world
A guiding principle is that special attention paid to those who make a commitment (and have shown ) to contribute their learning upstream - either via code contribution, proposal, activity on IRC, etc. I/we spend a tremendous amount of time on all of the feedback channels (like this one) to know who is active and from there form a relationship. If you follow my activity on any of these forums, you'll probably see a lot of "hey what you're doing is awesome. lets chat more" That's usually how it starts.
I hope that helps, and my inbox/calendar/time is always open for a conversation. If this is interesting to you or others, I'm a pretty open book. Don't hesitate.