We Need to Talk About Docker Hub

If you don't like it, then why don't you use a different provider?

If you want free stuff, is your strategy to smear them into giving you more free stuff?

Storage, compute, and traffic, isn't free. You've been the beneficiary of charity for years.

Yes, the open source community has relied on this implicit charity as a parasite, by exploiting whatever free services they could. And now we're paying the price, as you say, by having DockerHub as the default provider.

My suggestion is therefore that we need independent solutions, that are fully funded as a charity, and stop relying on freemium services from corporations that fundamentally don't care about the public good.

Here's a tiny bit of missing context.

This blog is for LinuxServer.io, who build repositories that produce free docker images, for free, paid for by donations, for a bunch of open source software. By the looks of things, they are literally a charity.

Conversely, their complaint is not "aren't docker rubbish? Let's mob 'em" - it's "heads up, something seems to be wrong and docker are not responding to anything, chances are there's trouble brewing - we're gonna start looking around and if you're depending on this, you should too"

I would say calling "the open source community" a "parasite" because they're using free services from companies that have benefited greatly and earned a lot of money from things given freely by the open source community seems weird.

Seems like a lot of people on here very concerned about those poor struggling corporations, and their exploitation by those evil open source charities. Feels like an evil political wind is blowing, wonder where that's coming from?

> If you're reading this and you work for Docker in some relevant capacity, give us a hint as to what we're supposed to do here, we'd really appreciate it.

It sounds to me like their ultimate goal is to get more free stuff.

And I'm saying: open source should not rely on benevolent corporations.

And writing articles to beg for services is not a healthy strategy in the long term.

Instead: use open standards, don't rely on centralized infrastructure, create a marketplace for providers, and create a better future. Stop maintaining the status quo of indentured servitude.

I love how you intentionally cropped off the first two words of that sentence, try to make out that their 30 word side note was actually the whole point of the 800 word article, and you STILL didn't manage to make them sound as malicious as you wanted to.

"give us a hint" - "Stop begging!"

As I say, you're clearly coming into this with a strong unjustifiable bias, I can tell because you're forced to use words like "smear", "parasite", "exploiting", "beg", "indentured servitude" - it's a cover for the cognitive dissonance.

But if you genuinely would like a discussion about the pitfalls of the funding models of open source, yeah it's a reasonable question that has never been satisfactorily answered. There are whole PHD projects on the subject, and nobody's cracked it. Giving money to open source projects is difficult for many reasons - ranging from tax treatment to geography even to legality. Providing services is somewhat easier, but in many companies in some countries even that comes with geopolitical legal issues. Marketplaces only work if you have something to barter, and if you would like to contribute to the freedoms you enjoyed, it's hard to make that work in a marketplace model, not to mention that even providing people the option of donating money for a product comes with overhead (legal / technological / service / financial network / server etc).

If you would like a discussion about ensuring abstractions over the services you use, sure, I'm here for it. Of course, it's hampered by a lack of consistent interfaces, and in some cases interfaces that ensure they can never be smoothed over. But that sounds like a cool open source project - in this case, I guess it would be an anyhub kind of deal that can serve images for different use cases, paired with a DSL for defining a resource (that can generate a dockerfile / docker compose file, in docker's case). Of course, serving images isn't free, but you've cracked the problem of funding models of open source, right? Right?

And you mention indentured servitude, loaded though that phrase is, it's also a poor analogy. Tax would be a closer match. You depend on open source and make money off it? Great. Giving open source a cut of that pie in some way seems the morally right thing to do. How you do that is up to you, but telling people they can use your service then pulling the rug while simultaneously ghosting them? That sounds kind.

You know what, I think you're right - it's so much easier to lambast someone for daring trust or daring to express concern than it is to do anything meaningful to improve the landscape.

> if you genuinely would like a discussion about the pitfalls of the funding models of open source

That is absolutely what I want, and I appreciate your contribution to the debate.

> you're forced to use words like "smear", "parasite"

I'm just trying to use fewer words, because people's attention spans are really short these days, which naturally requires the words to have more dense and intense meaning.

> it's so much easier to lambast someone

It's not easy, it's hard. People are refusing to accept that corporations are not your friends. Have you ever tried criticizing Apple?

My critique is specifically that the article:

1) presumes that Docker Hub should provide the service, despite clearly not responding to their application for free service.

2) then uses an article that invites peer pressure onto the company to get what they want.

Instead, I argue that it would be healthier if they:

1) explained why relying on Docker Hub is dangerous

2) what the alternatives are, and why they're not good enough

3) what needs to change, which may include consumer behavior - things that we control, because we really don't have control over Docker Hub.

> indentured servitude

By collectively perpetuating our dependence on them, we are engaged in self-enslavement.

And I think this type of article is a form of begging that our masters haven't given us enough breadcrumbs lately.

> 1) explained why relying on Docker Hub is dangerous

I mean, that's the other 770 words of the article. Except they're just giving their experience, and allowing you to come to your own decisions - because otherwise people might legitimately call them out for "smear" tactics.

> 2) what the alternatives are, and why they're not good enough

"as we grew we started mirroring our images to Gitlab and Quay.io," <= Alternatives (that they are using)

"Docker Hub is the de facto standard Docker registry, literally, if you don't specify a registry when pulling an image Docker will invisibly prepend docker.io/ to it." <= Why they're not good enough (extra config step)

> 3) what needs to change, which may include consumer behavior - things that we control, because we really don't have control over Docker Hub.

"but it does feel like we need to do something. Whatever we decide, we'll keep you informed." <= They're not there yet, but they're open and honest about it

> use fewer words, because people's attention spans are really short these days,

I can see that you have a short attention span.

> which naturally requires the words to have more dense and intense meaning

You are a belligerent, self important ignoramus who incorrectly believes the world needs his opinion. <= genuinely, do you like this style of discourse? Why are you treating shock language as a status quo worth maintaining, but trust and expecting decency from a corporation as some kind of unacceptable failing?