Re:Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise and Docker raises $35M
by tpetry on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @01:55PM
(#21527930)
Docker naming was all the time confusing. Think on Docker swarm which are 2 (3?) products.
Re:Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise and Docker raises $35M
by Patrick_Devine on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @05:30PM
(#21530411)
Two products. "Classic" Swarm, and SwarmKit. SwamKit is the thing which we think of as trying to compete with Kubernetes with a declarative model and is what people think of as being "Swarm". Very few people still use "Classic" Swarm, although it does still work.
Docker needs to keep its brand, obviously, or they have nothing to build a new business from.
But Mirantis is buying a business line called “Docker Enterprise”. That name can’t disappear overnight, it would be immensely confusing to customers, and impossible to pull off operationally. What you do in these situations is make an exception to the trademark exclusivity. Usually with a time limit. So, for example, Mirantis would have 2 years until they have to stop using the name “Docker enterprise”.
On the one hand that is confusing to analysts and journalists; on the other hand, developers don’t care about the enterprise product anyway, so to them it won’t be confusing. And this was probably the least messy option.