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Bocker: Docker implemented in around 100 lines of Bash (2015)

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398 points emersonrsantos | 10 comments | 23 Nov 24 23:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.013s | source | bottom
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mschuster91 ◴[24 Nov 24 00:42 UTC] No.42225102[source]▶
The fact how simple it is to re-implement a large part of Docker because all it fundamentally is a bit of glue code to the kernel is the biggest problem Docker-the-company faced and still faces.

Where Docker adds real value is not (just) Docker Hub but Docker for Windows and Mac. The integrations offer a vastly superior experience than messing around with VirtualBox and Vagrant by hand (been there, done that) to achieve running Docker on one's development machine.

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1. dilyevsky ◴[24 Nov 24 01:57 UTC] No.42225397[source]▶
Nah, they should have prioritized building some sort of PaaS solution like CloudRun, Render or Fly so they can sell that to enterprises for $$$. Instead they did half-baked docker swarm which never really worked reliably and then lost ground to k8s rapidly
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2. jen20 ◴[24 Nov 24 02:20 UTC] No.42225482[source]▶
Didn’t they buy at least one of these? It was garbage, and no one cared.
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3. smt88 ◴[24 Nov 24 03:27 UTC] No.42225720[source]▶
Docker was a spinoff of an internal tool used to build exactly the type of PaaS you're describing. It was like a better Heroku and I loved it, but they shut it down when they focused on commercializing Docker itself.
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4. mardifoufs ◴[24 Nov 24 04:37 UTC] No.42225940[source]▶
That's what people usually say but they have tried to do just that a few years ago and it didn't really work. Docker inc has been doing great since they have shifted towards even more standardization in their container runtime, and focused on dev tooling. They became profitable when they focused on Docker desktop and docker hub instead of trying to build a clunky alternative to kubernetes or yet another cloud orchestration tool/platform.
5. rudasn ◴[24 Nov 24 06:57 UTC] No.42226383[source]▶
dot cloud yes?

I was surprised when they shut that down too.

6. dilyevsky ◴[24 Nov 24 23:18 UTC] No.42231464[source]▶
dotCloud was actually what Docker came out of. No one cared because they didn’t prioritize it enough to make it good
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7. dilyevsky ◴[24 Nov 24 23:20 UTC] No.42231481[source]▶
That was always weird to me they opted for freemium cli instead of enterprise paas play. Maybe it was just too early
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8. smt88 ◴[25 Nov 24 02:41 UTC] No.42232730{3}[source]▶
My guess is the margins were really bad for a PaaS. It's expensive to build on top of other people's clouds.
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9. jen20 ◴[25 Nov 24 06:12 UTC] No.42233703{3}[source]▶
Orchard was the one I was thinking of.
10. mst ◴[25 Nov 24 15:34 UTC] No.42237099{4}[source]▶
There's also the issue that building an effective enterprise sales organisation is a whole Thing and if you believe you can achieve profitability via a different path then the temptation to file the enterprise approach under "I have no idea how to do this and also I would rather not" is probably pretty strong.

(this is in no way a comment about what the right decision would have been, only musing on an additional reason the decision might have gone the way it did)