Fact: Docker is insanely popular with devs but Docker Inc. is struggling as a company. Devs have invested a lot on the platform and entire production systems and deployment pipelines use it.
k8s announces "we're no longer supporting docker shim!" and what most devs heard is "k8s is moving off from docker (which we know has been struggling for a while)! Fuuuuuccckkkk what do we need to do??" and panicked. This is the source of the drama, and we're going to see many "takes" on it. Its just the way the blogging ecosystem works.
My other intent was to clarify that this has little impact on the runtime, because Docker was never the runtime, it was always containerd.
I don't intend to push a narrative, rather my intent is to communicate what I experienced with Docker in an enterprise setting across time. A lot of this also comes from my time outside of Red Hat as well.
Kubernetes continues to use OCI, runc and containerd - so basically the parts of Docker the kubernetes community asked for.
Yet here we are commenting on their demise as a business, blaming it on their “not being nice” and “not listening to their community”. It’s bullshit. We should be discussing how the longstanding tension over the role of Docker in the Kubernetes was finally resolved, in large parts through the successful efforts of the oci, runc and containerd projects which Docker started and shepherded to mass adoption.
Let’s take a step back and look at who is pushing this narrative about Docker, and how they benefit. I can’t help but notice whenever this drama pops up, a Red Hat employee is involved. Maybe it’s time for Red Hat to give up on old grudges and give credit where credit is due? Just a thought.
Docker may have failed as a business but it’s ridiculous to blame it on their lack of openness when their number one problem was being too open and trying too hard to get everyone to love them. Basically the opposite of what this blog post claims.