Docker is no longer open source!

Docker’s eating looks are getting more and more ugly.

On March 15, Docker sent an email to all Docker Hub users who have created an "organization", reminding them that they must upgrade to the paid team plan of $420 per year, otherwise, the Docker image of their account Will be deleted.

It can be learned from the official FAQ that the groups affected by this adjustment are open source organization accounts, including Docker individuals, Docker Pro, Docker Team or Docker Business accounts, Docker-sponsored open source members, and Docker verified releases and Docker's official images are not affected.

The text of the email is roughly as follows

Docker is retiring Free Team Organizations because this free feature has many of the same features, rates, and functionality as the paid Docker Team subscription;

After reviewing a list of accounts that were members of legacy Free Team Organizations, we have determined that you may be one of them. If you are using an older version of Free Team Organizations, access to all paid features (including private repositories) will be suspended on April 14, 2023 (11:59 PM UTC). You will need to upgrade your subscription (and by implication pay) before April 14, 2023 to continue accessing your organization;

If you do not upgrade to a paid subscription, Docker will retain your organization's data for 30 days, after which it will be deleted. Your access to public repositories will be retained during this period, but will be rate limited;

If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you can restore access to your organization's account at any time within 30 days.

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As we all know, Docker Hub is used by many open source projects to publish images, and most projects rely on free images. If the images are deleted, it will have a huge impact on accounts under free organizations.

As soon as the news broke, it caused huge controversy, and many people began to migrate their images out of Docker to other platforms or host them themselves. Subsequently, Docker CTO stated directly on Twitter: "Those accounts that do not pay will be closed and no one else will be allowed to take over the name."(Picture source: Twitter screenshot)

Die-hard supporters posted a long article accusing Docker of hypocrisy

As a die-hard supporter of Docker, the "Docker Captains" Loyal member Alex Ellis posted a lengthy complaint on his blog. As a paying user himself, he is not opposed to Docker making money, but Docker's communication methods and effects are terrible, creating anxiety for many of the most loyal and supportive community users. Their practice of using images to make open source exposes them This project is full of hostility and disjointed operation due to its hypocritical attitude towards open source sustainability issues.He said that the only hope at present is that organizations that obtain "open source" certification qualifications can be exempted from Docker "taxation", such as all projects owned by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) or the Apache Foundation. And cited the well-known open source project curl. This open source library is used on almost every Mac and Linux computer, and is even used by Docker itself, but it cannot escape this charging plan.

Feedback from Netizens

In addition to Alex Ellis’s lengthy complaint, it also triggered heated discussions among netizens on Hacker News and Twitter.

An SRE manager said bluntly: "When I saw this news in the morning, I felt a headache." Then he also mentioned: "In the next 30 days, a bunch of images that I rely on may disappear... "

Some netizens also joked: "Docker will eventually become someone else's wedding dress. I mean Containerized standard wedding dress", "free service that requires money to maintain" and "low risk" are incompatible. In addition, search the official account Linux Chinese community backend and reply "Linux" to get a surprise gift package.

However, some netizens have a more "optimistic" attitude towards Docker's approach, believing: "Docker is a tool that has advantages for software development. It is much better than the old method of managing dependencies and can Ensure that the version installed by everyone in the project is consistent."

In the past, with the development of cloud native, containerization, microservices, K8s and other technologies, Docker was widely used in the developer field. Today, Docker will delete all images of unpaid open source organizations, which will inevitably bring "discomfort" to developers. Although you can apply for free, the terms are very harsh.

What do you think of this measure of Docker?