But I agree Microsoft is the most likely buyer. They are probably just waiting for the bottom to fall out for Docker and they can snap it up for the right price.
Good catch, though. GitHub is a candidate because their core business model, like Most Linux Distributors, is built around aggregating and re-distributing open source software in a trustworthy fashion. (And support contracts around that.)
No acquisition is also a possibility. Neither Docker the tech nor Docker the company is too big to fail right now.
Oh my yes, the quiet release of CRI-O by RedHat and Google recently was a pivotal moment. You can run a container orchestration environment in production without anything from Docker the company. You still need it to build and maybe host images but the rest is pluggable.
VMWare is an interesting possibility! Docker seems like it would cannibalize too much of their existing product line, but VMWare's existing products are already kind of self-cannibalizing. (This is why many engineers find the enterprise market so confusing. Nobody differentiates products well, because past a certain size, networks of human relationships [sales, support, etc.] matter more than branding.)
But from that "good for us" perspective, VMWare looks as bad as Oracle these days. I would still "vote" for Microsoft.
0: http://www.businessinsider.com/florian-leibert-mesosphere-ce...
From the "good for us" perspective, the community would not miss the company's leadership on Linux Container standardization nearly as much as the aggregation service that is DockerHub. But from the "good for the acquiring company" perspective, who would care? A GitHub or a RedHat has the mission and user base where it might make sense, but both companies already have plenty of their own infrastructure tooling. I'm also not sure either company would bid very hard against an Oracle or Google.
The most strategic acquirer sounds to my ear like Microsoft. Their recent Linux compatibility investments prove they might actually Extend instead of Extinguish. We've gotten some time to get used to Microsoft not being The Enemy anymore. Heck, you could even say I'd be a little enthusiastic if this news dropped.