What's strange is Docker Compose is very slowly resurging. I almost feel like that with a few more primitves (e.g. nodes with tags) and you'd have a much simpler Kubernetes. Which a lot of people might like.
I agree it would, and I think it's unlikely, but I also think there's a gap between Docker Compose and Kubernetes, and while I know the implementation gap is large, the configuration syntax gap is small. If someone could extend the Compose syntax to include some sort of way to declare what node tags it should/shouldn't run on, and how many, it might be really interesting as a good power for config complexity tradeoff.
How likely do you think the introduction of a nodes primitive is given this?
I can see it if it were a strict opt in addition but it feels like it also fundamentally expands the scope of what the tool is.