That attitude doesn't leave a great impression for me. I take your points about how difficult it is, but I think we can all do better than throw our hands up in the air. For instance, you could talk about how easy containerization of CI/CD makes it easier to move your pipeline where impact is lowest. Or that you can control your own impact rather than leave it up to the whim of someone like CircleCI.
There's no silver bullet with environmental impact, which is why we all have to collectively apply whatever wins we can, wherever we can.
I think the ideal way is to let a startup thrive any way possible and when they're not trying to not starve anymore, begin environmental changes.
Oh yeah -- I'm not at all saying Docker is all bad.
* Like you mentioned, increasing interoperability allows the market be more efficient.
* Docker continued the path that VMs started towards making strong isolation even more efficient and accessible.
* Layers and caching are obviously good for resource consumption.
It's just that the original comment seemed to try shaming the Docker creators about what they've built. All they did was try and make something better. And if they didn't, someone else would have.
It's tragedies all the way down :-)
Making a successful tool in a competitive space is hard enough. Asking a creator to somehow factor in environmental impact isn't going to work. A creator that places additional constraints on themselves will more likely lose out to a competitor that doesn't.
This is the kind of thing a carbon tax is perfect for. Cost optimization is infused into how businesses and individuals operate. Tax the things you care about and watch all that machinery get to work!
Right now, people use Docker (and dynamic languages, bloated JS libraries, etc) because burning electricity is the cheapest route. (Sort of... the market's obviously not perfect.) Make electricity expensive enough and we'll get more efficient systems.
And of course taxes aren't the only solution. For example, Google Flights now shows the carbon cost of each flight option, which I think might actually move the needle. But that category of solution might only work in an industry with similar characteristics, e.g. infrequent but large purchases, mature industry that can define measurement standards.