[esseph]

Why would docker?

Because it's not very useful by itself for running production infra, but it's great for helping to develop it.

Otherwise you're going to see more and more move to podman (and podman desktop) / OCI containers over time, as corps won't have to pay the docker tax and will get better integration with their existing k8s platform.

[pvtmert]

Docker is useful and running in production. (well, it was the only, before containerd got separated entirely and it was usable directly from K8s about when it was 1.16)

What you say is absolutely correct. If Docker keeps creating compatibility layers for it's competitors, it makes everyone to switch to a competitor. In this case, the competitor is Kubernetes as it's running in production for much larger scale (enterprise workloads) compared to Podman et. al.

Hence, it's the job of Podman, Kubernetes, et. al. to write their compatibility layer to provide a value-add for their customers.