shingler

I'm well-acquainted with Docker's architecture and some of the ways it's used in the field. I wouldn't call it modular. It might be well-factored and even separated into multiple modes and repos, but that's not modularity; that's just good code.

When you ship batteries, people depend on the batteries and that means you can't really swap them when you want to because things stop fitting. It doesn't help that all of this is baked by default into a single monolithically versioned binary with an API whose documentation isn't nearly rigorous or stable enough to promote alternative implementations.

I like Docker or I wouldn't be here commenting, but you know what would make me love Docker? If every piece was pipeable CLI command.

Like...

    docker-listen tcp://,... | docker-run --image-tar=blah --container-tar=blah | docker-monitor --log-file=blah | docker-swarm --orchestrator-socket=orch.sock | docker-link --port=some.other.machine:port

I know this is a crazy rethinking of how Docker's APIs work, but I think that fact perfectly demonstrates my point about how un-modular Docker really is as far as its users are concerned.

Nope. Just a longtime HN user who finds more honest and productive discourse in anonimity.

Frankly I'm not sure what the sockpupperty accusation is about, since I'm not particularly promoting any direction.

I don't think there's any danger as long as everything is open and interchangeable, and you can steer clear of Docker (the company) even if you like Docker (the format). So far that's basically the case with all of the Docker projects.

Ideally in the future, Docker will become an HTTP for servers, with standardized and competing servers/clients/services. I like the idea of that future. Publically, the Docker folks seem open to it.

However, I do see where you're coming from. As a for profit Docker has every incentive (perhaps even fiduciary duty) to pull the good ol' technology bait-and-switch: get Docker on every server, and the create a Kafkaesque technology dilemma to squeeze the dollars out of everyone who bought in. Microsoft's playbook has plenty of tips on how to do this.

I guess the only solution as a Docker user is to be hypersensitive to any sign that Docker wants to start locking the technology to the company. When you can imagine the day you can't use Docker (the containers) without Docker (the company), it's time to run the other way fast.

But I can't see that day yet, and I hope I never do. And I hope Docker as a company can find a way to grow without using that oldest, sleaziest trick in the book.

Yes, and all of it. It's largely the same thing, in Docker core.

That's just Compose, though. The other two are completely different beasts.