[ralph87]

> This entire post is just unnecessary fear-mongering.

You perhaps missed the bottom 30% suggesting there may be better options.

Docker's registry protocol treats layers essentially as opaque slabs, as any user will no doubt be aware, where update of a single timestamp or byte of a file could mean the reupload (and download) of a potentially unlimited amount of data. While that architecture has its perks (simplicity, sequential IO patterns suited to the magnetic disks of 2013), there are obvious downsides.

We have plenty of systems just like Docker capable of managing Docker-like file counts without the obscene bandwidth abuse, we just don't call them registries. They have names like Perforce, Subversion and even (some Microsoft variant) of Git. Eliminating the data gravity angle is impossible, but reducing its potency by several orders of magnitude is not only possible but has already been done repeatedly in many popularly deployed systems.

This is not to suggest replacing registry with Git, but perhaps some graph-like manifest format combined with some new "fetch-multiple-objects" protocol verb would be all required to bring the cost of running a registry down to essentially a non-issue.

[tidepod12]

You seem to be all over the place with your issues. Are you mad that AWS has bandwidth limits, or are you mad that AWS is encouraging the use of Docker altogether, or do you just have some kind of vendetta against the boogeyman that is AWS?

Docker registries are how things are done right now. And the changes to Docker Hub that happened this week have a significant impact on the Docker ecosystem. This announcement is about solving that impact now, because developers need a solution now. This doesn't have anything to do with any hypothetical improvements to the Docker ecosystem or Docker data usage that may otherwise be in progress by [insert company here].