[013a]

There's this prevalent false position that Kubernetes is successful because of Google.

Yeah, Kubernetes initially learned a ton because of Borg and Google's deep investment into containers dating back a very long time. But, arguably, Kubernetes is successful because Google Let It Go. Its a true open source project, with governance by a wide number of industry advocates, underneath the Linux Foundation.

By comparison, Docker is a VC-backed profit-minded startup. Of course it was going to lose this race, for the same reason Windows isn't the dominant OS in the cloud.

Fundamentally: You can't build a hyperscale startup based on a technology. It doesn't appear to work anymore. The best case is the Docker/Kubernetes or Oracle/Postgres/MySQL case: someone else does it, maybe better, open sources it, community forms around it, you're toast. The worst case is the MongoDB/AWS or Elastic/AWS case; a cloud provider copies you, probably does it worse, but its cheaper and more integrated with the cloud, so they still win.

Docker was doomed; they could have been a very nice business, but the issue is taking on huge valuations and capital, scaling like mad, and then finding out you have no ground underneath your feet to support that valuation.

[jjtheblunt]

Parenthetically, Linux being an open source reincarnation of Solaris seems also an example, no?

[Someone]

It would surprise me if Linus even knew about Solaris when he worked on the first release of Linux.

Solaris’ first release was in June 1992, with first use of the name in marketing materials in September 1991 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#His...)

Linus’ famous message was from the same time (September 17, 1991)

Calling Linux an open source version of Minix is more appropriate, but it still wouldn’t be a good example of this.

Minix isn’t dead. It moved to a BSD license, and is deployed in millions of hundreds of millions of Intel CPUs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Hardwa...)

[mumblemumble]

I think that, once you're going that far back in history, it's pretty critical to keep track of the GNU/Linux distinction. Linus just wrote a kernel. And then the GNU userland, which had already been in development since the mid 80s, but was still somewhat lacking a workable kernel, was adopted as the official userland to use with the Linux kernel.

And at roughly the same time, IIRC, when Sun decided to migrate their Unix from a BSD flavor to a SysV flavor, which came to be called Solaris, they also used some GNU bits. Which might explain some similarities between the two.

[ksangeelee]

The first Linux distribution I remember using was Slackware on floppy disks, at a time when building a kernel was pretty much necessary to get a working system. A great learning experience, all in all.

However, the point I'd like to make is that it was clear back then just how much was contributed directly by the GNU project, and also how favored GNU's GPL was by developers who wanted to contribute their work.

GNU really did seem like it was everything that made the Linux kernel act and feel like a Unix system, though I had no proper appreciation of that at the time.

[AkshatM]

Is this Richard Stallman? ;)

[iforgotpassword]

No, he wouldn't have called it GNU/Linux: https://www.sudosatirical.com/articles/richard-stallman-inte...

[StreamBright]

Not really. Solaris is (was) from a ground up a corporate Unix environment designed to run mission critical applications. All the management interfaces and features reflected that. Zones were way ahead of the time, also pretty nice features.

[NikkiA]

Solaris is more an example of Oracle's shittiness, it was doing fine with Sun, plenty of places that still relied on it being a commercially supported unix, even when it was open sourced.

[msla]

Linux is a more-open and more-pragmatic reincarnation of what MINIX was in 1991, when you couldn't redistribute MINIX source code but could only get it by buying Tanenbaum's book, and MINIX was high-church microkernel design with performance problems that Torvalds got sick of.

MINIX has been BSD licensed since 2000, BTW.

[orbifold]

Versions of Solaris are open source aswell (Illumos)

[lazyguy2]

Illumos and friends are effectively dead, except as hobbies for enthusiasts. Sun Microsystems, now Oracle, didn't like the reception Open Solaris got so they packed up their source code and went home.

Which is really a shame.

All 'True' Unixes are just closed source versions of what originally were open source operating systems. By taking copyright seriously and having the misconception that there is intrinsic value in 'IP' they effectively sentenced their operating systems and investors to a long term grave.

But I doubt most of them feel bad about it. They got their millions and their nice fat retirements. It doesn't matter now if customers now view their once dominate systems as a sort of technical debt cancer.

If it wasn't for the destructive power that copyright has on technology and the demands of board members to monetize Unix.. we would all be using BSD right now. Unfortunately the tech people from 30 years ago didn't understand the power of 'letting go' and thus allowed them to destroy Unix.

As far as docker goes it has a lot of momentum as a daemon and it'll probably stay that way for a long time despite some technically superior solutions for running containers that have cropped up in the past few years. The newer container solutions just don't have the community backing them and that matters.

[linuxhiker]

FreeBSD is a 'True' Unix and it is as open as they come.

[dangerbird2]

From a trademarking stance, the only 'True" unixes are those that pay to get certified by Single UNIX specification. Of those, two are commercial Linux distributions, and the rest (including macOS) are proprietary unix operating systems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#Curr...

[snaky]

> someone else does it, maybe better, open sources it, community forms around it, you're toast

Oracle is very much okay still with superior technology, despite open source, and community, if we are talking about PostgreSQL.