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by toomuchtodo 1255 days ago
This issue was brought up in the initial hacker news thread, when Docker was moving towards this pricing model. Here we are, $120M ARR later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28369570

4 comments

Competitive Docker Desktop replacements (podman) are just starting to see adoption IMO. Let's see the number next year. Lots of companies had no other choice but to pay.
Maybe i'm just in a bubble but none of those Docker Desktop replacements work well on a locked down corporate laptop. Sure you can get it to work somehow, manually configuring proxies, dns and stuff. Docker Desktop somehow just works. Thats why we pay for it.
Life is too short to spend a third of your active life left on a locked down corporate laptop. You should be admin.
I mean, the corporate is paying you for that time either way so that's their loss really
Yes, they pay you for that time, so what? Are you also not losing if you are not satisfied with your working environment?
Many people don't actually care enough to feel dissatisfaction. They just get in, do the job, and get out.
Rancher Desktop works on my Macbook w/ Crowdstrike, Zscaler, Globalprotect, and I'm sure a few other things. Multipass doesn't.
Really? I can run containers without root on Podman, which I could never do with Docker.
That is changing fast and in a year or two Podman and Rancher (and a few others) will be just as good. A number of large companies are also building their own in-house replacements.

I was personally looking for an alternative even before the license change, because the performance of Docker Desktop on my Macbook Pro is terrible in a number of different ways.

I think it will be interesting to see the next few years. There were quite a few orgs that jumped as the pricing was introduced, detachment from k8s etc that was a side effect, a bunch of new options in (free) market. Just from my perspective out of the orgs I know of that bought into the pricing, every one of them has active projects to get off in the next year.
> Here we are, $120M ARR later.

Juicing ARR in a dying company is not rocket science, keep an eye on that number and compare it in 2025 or so to Apple or Microsoft.

Such a strange way to say, “Charging enterprises for value provided.” They’re clearly providing value if customers are paying for it. If you would prefer to spend engineering time rolling your own, that is an option. Paying someone else to make that pain point go away is, clearly, also an option. Tangentially, sell to businesses, not individual devs.

Isn’t this forum supported financially by startups generating value from solving someone else’s problem…for money?

The success bar you're defining is that Docker has to be as successful as two generational companies?!?!?!

Also, please explain how one would "juice" ARR to $120M.

Assuming I meant absolute dollars is absurd, I was talking about sustaining or increasing revenue. That should, if anything, be easier for a small company.

In theory it’s simple and it’s happened many times: If you have a company with a lot of users but no income stream, you can hold those users hostage without adding much value, just find something that causes immense discomfort if it disappears and charge for it. Profit skyrockets, customers leave over time, the company dies.

I've never seen that get you to $120M ARR. Have any examples?
What a strange argument. So if it hasn’t happened before it’s impossible?
You said "Juicing ARR in a dying company is not rocket science" - I'm saying it is rocket science and that it's way hard. The fact there aren't any examples makes me feel like I'm correct in saying it's not easy.
They have LONG way to go before they can prove sustainable in the long run and justify their valuation.