The macOS Docker Desktop app (I haven’t experienced other versions) is free and works fine. The paid upgrade is only required for certain features that I would imagine many teams don’t need.

My complaint with it is that I’d prefer if there was a 100% feature-parity CLI interface so it could run in the background, and that it should be open source.

To have a low-level developer tool that’s required to be in my menubar and administered through a closed-source GUI is IMHO an insane departure from web software development norms. I use lazydocker for now but it should be an official utility that replaces the GUI app.

Docker Desktop is now only free "for small businesses (fewer than 250 employees AND less than $10 million in annual revenue), personal use, education, and non-commercial open source projects." per https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/

It works fine if you're working solo, but companies have to pay for it.

> To have a low-level developer tool that’s required to be in my menubar and administered through a closed-source GUI is IMHO an insane departure from web software development norms.

Yeah, this is why I mentioned the mac/windows shop part. Desktop is only required on mac/windows. On linux, it's just the cli, which works just fine (it's also free).

Docker desktop works pretty well, and I'm not saying they don't deserve the money, but I'm not going to spend my own money to do enterprise work, so I have to investigate alternatives (minikube and podman worked the best, in my experience).

It's not free if you're in a decently sized company, that's the whole point of the Docker controversy.

If the company is of a certain size, Docker Desktop is no longer free. As in, it's free to install and use, but your company is supposed to pay a license.

It depends on how complex your usecase is, but using pods and just scripting your containers' composition isn't such a hassle in podman.