| HN Mirror

I thought the whole Windows thing was totally stupid (I is also freedom software advocate). I've been a big fan of Docker for about three years, put loads of stuff into production at a handful of different companies, most recently using native Swarm features that came with 1.12. Personally, I thought the Windows thing was a gimmick. But what I see (as someone that has access to the Docker community through open source) is this enormous group of people who are chained to Windows technologies. And for years and years they've watched all the cool kids play with the cool toys, from the sideline. And what Docker-for-Windows has done -- with help from a new kind of Microsoft -- is expose all of these very eager people to containerization and microservices and open source and free software more generally. Having been exposed to loads of these people (and there are an enormous number of them), I think it means a lot of important things about bringing open source and free software into the fold for these people. Docker-for-Windows opens the door for a yuge number of developers to appease their enterprise leadership by sticking with the Microsoft brand, while also having the whole world of free software at their fingertips. I can see this world on the horizon in which open source and free software concepts have broken into the Microsoft ecosystem, and I believe it comes waving the Docker flag. I am still extremely suspicious of Microsoft as a company, and wouldn't pay for Windows if my life depended on it, but you can't say they aren't doing some interesting things over there at Microsoft lately.