On August 31st, Docker announced updates to our product subscriptions — Docker Personal, Pro, Team and Business. Our CEO Scott Johnston recently joined Corey Quinn on an episode of Screaming in the Cloud to go over all the details and discuss how the changes have been received by businesses and the broader developer community.
The episode with Scott is titled “Heresy in the Church of Docker Desktop with Scott Johnston.” It’s a play on the title of a talk Corey once gave (“Heresy in the Church of Docker”) after he met Scott when they both worked at Puppet.
There’s a substantial discussion around Docker Desktop. Scott describes it as a unique hybrid — one that’s based on upstream open-source technologies (Docker Engine, Docker Compose, BuildKit, etc.), while also being a commercial product that’s engineered for the native environments of Mac and Windows, and soon Linux. He also recalls life before Docker Desktop when developers had to contend with complex setup, maintenance, and “tricky stuff that can go wrong” — all of which Docker Desktop handles so that developers can simply focus on building great apps.
Scott and Corey also discuss the why behind the new subscription tiers, and Docker Business in particular. A key factor was large organizations who use Docker Desktop at scale — as in hundreds and thousands of developers — requesting capabilities to help them manage those large developer environments. Another factor was the need to balance continuing investment in Docker Desktop to give organizations increased productivity, flexibility and security, while also sustainably scaling the Docker business, and still providing a generous free experience with the Docker Personal subscription.
According to Scott, the response from businesses to the updated subscriptions has been overwhelmingly positive. Not only have there turned out to be far more Docker Desktop users inside organizations than previously thought, but many companies have already proactively purchased a Docker subscription. The positive momentum is allowing Docker to accelerate items in the company’s roadmap for developers, such as Docker Desktop for Linux.
You can listen to Episode 264 of “Screaming in the Cloud,” titled “Heresy in the Church of Docker Desktop with Scott Johnston,” here.
Considering an Alternative to Docker Desktop?
Read this blog recapping Docker Captain Bret Fisher‘s video where he reminded his audience of the many things — some of them complex and subtle — that Docker Desktop does that make it such a valuable developer tool.