Docker turned around and suspended accounts, forced fees, and no longer open source!

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Author | Wang Ruiping From: 51CTO technology stack

A few days ago, Docker Hub had a big event! Anyone who created an “organisation” received an email with a short PDF link. The content of the email is full of “money”: if you don’t pay for the upgrade as required, the user will lose access to the data. This move will not only break the automated build of open source projects, but also cause great anxiety and trouble for users who have been relying on open source. It seems that the good times for users who want to prostitute for nothing are over!

The email mentions that after reviewing the list of legacy free organization type user accounts, Docker is retiring them. As requested, private repositories on the list will be enforced on April 14th. Those users will have until this date to upgrade to paid subscriptions if they want to continue to have access.

During this time, any access to images in the user’s public repository will still be preserved. Access to organizational accounts can be restored if the user pays for the required upgrade.

Docker Hub is the world’s largest repository of container images, with a range of content sources including container community developers, open source projects and independent software vendors.

Previously, users could not only access free public repositories, but also opt for a subscription plan for private repos.

But fortunately, Docker’s move to cancel open source and switch to payment has not “killed all”. Docker Personal, Docker Professional, Docker Team (paid) and Docker Commercial will still be retained.

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User: Unacceptable to quit open source

If free is canceled and open source is cleared, the biggest problem is: the cost for each Docker Hub user who has created their own “organization” to maintain their public image will rise from $0/year to several hundred dollars/year strong>. This behavior is tantamount to holding the user hostage, and if the payment is not paid, the system will collapse.

Secondly, Docker was born in the era of open source. Although there are funding problems, the scope of open source programs should not be unrealistically defined in this way. It excludes any side projects, as well as projects that are fully donated to open source foundations. This will greatly reduce its prestige in the minds of users.

Moreover, the free version of the product is widely used by open source projects. Deleting it means losing data related to those teams, including Docker images. Therefore, Docker should not seek to monetize services or charge higher-level fees, and accepting donations to maintain open source is acceptable.

Users in the community were once the creators of Docker. And now, when Docker has made huge gains, it has completely forgotten its roots.

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What is the impact after charging?

Docker’s CTO had informally stated on Twitter: “They will close accounts that don’t pay and won’t allow anyone to take over.”

But the fact is not so absolute. Ideally, these organization accounts would continue to be linked to user accounts. So if the user pays for them later, it can be restored.

In the meantime, in response to the damage caused by malware and toxic images. Maintainers have turned to publishing open-source packages for the GitHub registry, a hosting platform for open-source and proprietary software projects.

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Why? Because Docker enforces rate limits on users, anyone who downloads content from Docker Hub will need a paid subscription – be it an individual or a business. You can download Prometheus, NATS, Go, Python, and Node mirrors for money.

Fortunately, if the project you maintain belongs to a foundation, such as CNCF or Apache Foundation, you can easily apply to open it.

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Docker Hub brings convenience to users

Users know that Docker itself is just a tool, and Docker Hub is the core of the entire ecosystem. For example, Docker Hub is like an App Store. If there is no App, your mobile phone will really become a “mobile phone”.

Specifically, Docker Hub is a center for storing Docker, and its name is similar to Github. In contrast, Github stores code, and Docker Hub stores Docker images.

Docker Hub facilitates users to explore the world’s largest container image library, making it easy to search more than 1 million container images. Not only that, but it can also share and store images in public or private repositories, making it easy for users to get free public repositories or choose a subscription plan for private repos.

As described in the previous article, Docker Hub is a private repository that can automatically build container images through GitHub and Bitbucket and push them to Docker Hub teams and organizations.

The images on Docker Hub are divided into two categories, one is official images, such as nginx, mysql, etc.; the other is ordinary user images, which are uploaded by users themselves. For domestic users, if you feel that the access speed of Docker Hub is too slow, you can use the images provided by some domestic companies.

These mirrors are very safe, making it easy for users to build projects and find suitable images at a glance. At the same time, Docker Hub can also inspect the image, understand the vulnerabilities in the image components, and use these vulnerabilities to solve the problem.

In the process of using Docker Hub personally, the following situations are covered: find some mature Docker images on it, such as python and ubuntu, and then pull them to use locally; in addition, use Docker Hub as a personal Docker image storage , put your personal image on it.

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How to upgrade to paid model

Many users may question whether it is beneficial to pay for Docker subscription? Of course, the Docker series products have different advantages. First, Docker is the best choice for individual developers who want to speed up their productivity; second, Docker Team is the ideal choice for users looking to collaborate efficiently in small teams; and third, Docker Business is the best choice for enterprises looking to centralize management.

So, how can users upgrade to a paid subscription model? First, you need to log into your account on docker.com, then, select Upgrade in the header, and select the paid subscription level and number of seats you want to upgrade to , Finally, just continue to pay!

Once you upgrade to a paid subscription model, your account and all associated configurations, mirrors and repositories under all directories will be 100% retained, isn’t it nice!

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What are the alternatives to Docker

A Reddit user expressed this point of view: Docker Hub’s withdrawal from open source is cruel, but it has to face this reality and will look for better alternatives.

Podman, Kubernetes, Openshift, LXD, Docker Swarm, BuidKit, and Mesos are some of the popular alternatives in the market today. The following focuses on the two alternatives Podman and Containerd:

(1) Podman has no daemon, open source, and can be used to build, run and manage Linux OCI containers and container images. It is easy to use, compatible with Kubernetes, supports multiple container formats, and provides finer-grained control over resource allocation.

(2) Containerd provides a consistent and stable interface for running containers, manages the life cycle of containers by starting and stopping containers, and can perform image management and storage. In addition, Containerd can also be used together with other container orchestration tools to manage the expansion and scheduling of containers in the cluster, which has the advantages of light weight, consistency, and flexibility.

It is now foreseeable that in the next few years, Docker will still be able to occupy a certain proportion of the market. Ten years later, the IT industry will no longer regard Docker as an essential tool in the developer’s technology stack.

References:

https://www.docker.com/

https://blog.alexellis.io/docker-is-deleting-open-source-images/

Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations
by u/oekitty in programming

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