[HN Gopher] Docker Acquires Mutagen
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Docker Acquires Mutagen
Author : gtirloni
Score : 76 points
Date : 2023-06-27 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.docker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.docker.com)
| drcongo wrote:
| Think I'll stick with Orb Stack still though.
| SirSavary wrote:
| Orb Stack looks neat but I don't think it provides that
| capabilities that Mutagen does? It seems like the two would be
| compatible with one another.
| mdeeks wrote:
| OrbStack is shockingly good. We have tools that are deeply
| integrated with Docker Desktop and the CLI and it all worked
| perfectly out of the box when I switched to OrbStack. It also
| takes like seconds to start and has yet to overheat my laptop
| or drain my battery.
|
| Highly recommended: https://orbstack.dev/
| vosper wrote:
| TIL Docker Desktop is a battery drain / resource hog. I'll
| give this a try.
| samcat116 wrote:
| +1 for Orbstack, shockingly good.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Why do we need GUIs? I find Docker CLI shockingly easy to use.
| ttfkam wrote:
| I use the CLI as well, but on MacOS, you need more plumbing
| like a Linux VM. OrbStack (and Docker Desktop) provide this
| plumbing in a single app package, so the CLI can actually
| work, whether you prefer a GUI or a CLI. (Or docker-compose,
| as I use most often.)
| voz_ wrote:
| Why are acquisitions legal? Is there ever a serious argument for
| how a company acquiring another company is net beneficial to
| users/customers?
| gochi wrote:
| That question is debated, and for good reason. I'm a fan of the
| limitations based on market cap and valuations. We really have
| done a terrible job at upholding Sherman's Antitrust act,
| instead allowing the very thing it was attempting to prevent,
| to come true. All under the facade of "innovation".
|
| Most arguments I've read on the issue are very telling.
| Arguments like we can't regulate M&A because they'll just
| invest elsewhere without M&A regulations. Which is great for
| several reasons: we should not want to protect companies that
| would that easily go elsewhere, and this assumes people need
| the company far more than the company needs people which is a
| gigantic problem in itself.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Because people want an avenue to exit for the time they've
| spent building.
| tptacek wrote:
| Because people generally have the right to negotiate and form
| agreements with one another, that being one of the basic
| applications of free association. Every time a company buys a
| part it uses to build a product, or hires a contractor to do a
| specialized job, it's doing the same fundamental thing as it is
| in an acquisition.
|
| That doesn't make the right unlimited; it isn't, and arguably
| it should be more tightly regulated. But disallowing
| acquisitions as a matter of policy would lead to weird results
| nobody wants.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think the main argument is that it lets
| companies provide better products and potentially cheaper
| prices from vertical integration. Sometimes acquisitions are
| only done for the human resources, and the customers of the
| acquirer now benefit from that person. If your competitor knows
| how to make the same product but cheaper, you can buy them and
| now your product is cheaper.
|
| In theory it makes tons of sense - why compete when we could
| work together? But as long as we're requiring companies to be
| profitable we can't also expect them to make decisions that are
| net beneficial - only net profitable, and the profit motive for
| wiping out competitors is clear
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| This is also ignoring the kinda simple case of buying for IP
| - if you're a toy maker and you want to sell toys for movies,
| you can do that for free if you also own the movie and avoid
| licensing fees. Or maybe you need some specific patent and a
| competitor won't license it to you as long as they're in
| business because then you legally have to work at a
| disadvantage - IP is kinda by definition meant to hurt
| consumers for a period as a reward for the holder, so
| removing that would make the products better
| joshAg wrote:
| > Why are acquisitions legal?
|
| It'd take at least semester of public policy, a semester of
| economics, a semester of history, and a semester of legal
| studies to adequately answer that.
|
| The shorter answer is that nonnatutal persons and natural
| persons have the same rights to do what they want with their
| property, barring very specific exemptions. One of those
| exemptions is monopolies, but (and add this to the list of shit
| Ronald fucking Reagan and the university of chicago screwed up,
| too) in the 1980s US anti-monopoly enforcement switched from
| focusing on ensuring a competitive marketplace to focusing on
| ensuring economic efficiency and consumer welfare, so it became
| much much much easier to merge and acquire competitors.
| lowercased wrote:
| Ideally this gets bundled in to standard mac docker so it's just
| default behaviour. I've spent way too many hours trying to get
| this - and various other "speed up docker on mac" -
| configurations set up properly. Could never do it. Guess I'm just
| dumb, but I just want to press a button or two. I'm not a docker
| expert - I often don't use it by choice, but have to use it in
| some client/project situations. It was simply too cumbersome to
| install/configure last time I tried (2021 and mid 2022).
| plorg wrote:
| Note for the confused (maybe just me?), this is not related to
| python-mutagen[0], the metadata library.
|
| [0] https://mutagen.readthedocs.io
| xenoscopic wrote:
| I'm the creator of Mutagen, happy to answer any questions that I
| can about the project, acquisition, or anything else!
| kkirsche wrote:
| Do you believe given Docker's history of poor strategy (e.g.,
| monetizing late requiring changes that negatively impact
| reputation such as docker desktop and hub), communication
| (e.g., the short notice changes a couple of months ago around
| free groups resulting in backlash) and in some cases
| destruction of successful businesses (see other comments in
| this thread) that this will result in a positive result for end
| users?
|
| I hope you made bank while the ship continues to sink.
| xenoscopic wrote:
| Mutagen's core users are primarily Docker users, and I
| honestly think they'll be much better served by the tighter
| integrations that we'll be able to offer now. If I didn't
| think that were the case, and I didn't think there were a net
| win (for Docker, Mutagen, and their users), then I wouldn't
| have joined.
| kkirsche wrote:
| Fair, I appreciate the answer. I guess I've just seen
| enough purchases where it's just for the payday that I'm a
| bit cynical. Thanks again for taking the time to read and
| answer, wishing you the best
| xenoscopic wrote:
| Thanks! I totally get it -- I think a lot of time with
| acquisitions in general there's also a lot of good faith
| intentions that never manifest for whatever practical
| reason(s), so I can totally understand why the cynicism
| arises. I appreciate the positive wishes and I will do my
| best to convert those into positive outcomes!
| mati365 wrote:
| What's your salary?
| osigurdson wrote:
| What kind of question is this?
| nektro wrote:
| there's nothing wrong with this question. my two tech jobs
| ive earned $105k/year and $125k/year salary respectively
| sporadicallyjoe wrote:
| Oh no, they're curious about his salary. Who could think to
| ask such a heinous question?
| klardotsh wrote:
| It's pretty uncommon to post one's salary on a public
| forum like this one, let alone to answer a random
| outburst question in a thread about a company
| acquisition.
| osigurdson wrote:
| OK, what is your salary?
| operatingthetan wrote:
| They didn't offer up an "ask me anything" did they?
| osigurdson wrote:
| [flagged]
| operatingthetan wrote:
| I think the norm you're suggesting goes against the
| original novelty of the "AMA." There is no act, and
| they're not the ones behaving poorly. Every AMA attracts
| odd questions, but it's even stranger to get mad about
| it.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Ah the original novelty of the AMA, back in those quaint
| gatherings at the town circle. Naturally the subjects
| were allowed to ask the minister literally anything. They
| all had a good laugh and much was learned. I harken back
| to those rosary tinted times of old. Good jolly.
| xenoscopic wrote:
| Well, that's one of those things I _won 't_ answer, but
| Docker is actually really great about listing nominal salary
| ranges for their positions on their Docker Careers page [1] -
| I'd encourage anyone to check out the openings there!
|
| [1] https://www.docker.com/career-openings/
| debarshri wrote:
| Are you happy with the outcome?
| xenoscopic wrote:
| I'm really happy with this outcome! I've been a Docker
| Captain for almost 3 years now, so being an employee at
| Docker was a very easy switch to flip (at least mentally). As
| I said in another comment, this really felt like the logical
| step given that almost all of Mutagen's users are Docker
| users, and I think this is the best possible outcome for the
| project too!
| sneak wrote:
| You started an open source business making and publishing free
| software. How do you feel about going to work for a proprietary
| software vendor that ships lots of closed source software under
| restrictive licenses?
|
| Was it a change in your own views toward user freedom (and an
| abandonment of free software ideology) or a practical matter?
| xenoscopic wrote:
| I'd point out that most of the foundational components of
| Docker's technology stack are FOSS (e.g. [0] [1]). Mutagen
| also has (and had, prior to acquisition) closed-source
| components and components licensed under non-OSI licenses
| (e.g. SSPL), so evaluate my response in that context (and
| also please note that these are _my_ responses, and not
| representative of Docker 's opinions/positions). Also, as
| mentioned in the acquisition FAQ [2], we don't have any plans
| to change the open-source licensing structure, and we're
| still open to contributions.
|
| It's a delicate balance to strike, and almost more delicate
| to discuss. At the end of the day, an open source business is
| still a business, and you have to make money to eat, shelter,
| and continue writing code. I can certainly appreciate that
| there are different approaches to balancing that with open-
| source (e.g. consulting rather than close-sourcing), but so
| long as you're setting natural (non-contrived) boundaries
| between open-source and proprietary, then I don't think
| you're doing anything wrong. In fact, several companies were
| embedding and making money from Mutagen before I was, but
| that never really bothered me -- that was the freedom I was
| affording them as users.
|
| I have nothing but the utmost respect for user freedom and
| I've always strived to offer that with Mutagen (e.g. allowing
| people to disable components that might not fit the OSI
| definition of FOSS). I also have nothing but the utmost
| respect for the authors of open-source software; Mutagen
| stands on the shoulders of many different dependencies and
| I've always strived to ensure that we're acknowledging those
| in a manner that is compliant with their licensing
| requirements (or going above and beyond that).
|
| In the end, it's a tough but fair question. I don't think my
| views have changed and I don't think there's any real
| incompatibility. It's a balance I'll necessarily continue to
| assess on a daily basis, both at Docker and in any other FOSS
| I write.
|
| [0] https://github.com/docker
|
| [1] https://github.com/moby
|
| [2] https://www.docker.com/blog/mutagen-acquisition/#mutagen-
| faq
| gyudin wrote:
| Kinda astonishing how some startup with almost no revenue that
| burned through hundreds millions of dollars is still able to
| acquire anything x)
| malisper wrote:
| > Kinda astonishing how some startup with almost no revenue
| that burned through hundreds millions of dollars is still able
| to acquire anything x)
|
| As of December, Docker was doing $100M+ of ARR[0]. No where
| close to no revenue
|
| [0] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/asethi_docker-the-phoenix-
| sag...
| ttfkam wrote:
| For all the hate it gets, it's astounding what you can
| accomplish by charging for your product.
|
| It's why OrbStack will also start charging once the open beta
| period is over.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Oh, so that's why it has an extension for Docker Desktop.
|
| Mutagen has become a core part of many of my workflows. The UX
| can be a little rough, but reliability and speed amazing.
|
| Maybe they'll improve it a bit, maybe they'll mess it up,
| whatever, the current version is very good!
| hosh wrote:
| I guess Docker's fuse fs on native is still too slow. I remember
| one of the options was filesyncing in some way, such as with
| rsync triggered by inotify.
| orra wrote:
| Anybody use this? Either the cloud service or the open source
| command line file sync app?
|
| I've dabbled with the latter, but not much besides that.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| I use it with ddev for local development.
|
| https://ddev.readthedocs.io/
| quechimba wrote:
| Yeah, I used the command line sync. It was great. I was running
| my development environment on a virtual machine in the cloud
| and I could edit all the files locally so I had no lag. Worked
| really well.
| nathan-muir wrote:
| I've been using it with vagrant. It's an amazing file sync
| between host and guest. Avoids so many of the annoyances of nfs
| et al
| deergomoo wrote:
| I used it with Docker for Mac locally back when bind mounted
| volumes on Mac were perilously slow. From the article though it
| looks like the focus is on remote containers.
| invisible wrote:
| I set it up for a team of ~30. This makes a huge difference for
| mounting things like `node_modules` with lots of inodes. The
| difference locally is pretty astounding.
| babbledabbler wrote:
| Yes I started using this in the past year. It dramatically sped
| up my watch/test cycle on mac.
|
| It seems like something that shouldn't be necessary on Mac with
| docker so I hope they just make it a standard docker feature.
| zegl wrote:
| Congrats Jacob! Mutagen always really impressed me, and is some
| of the most beautiful code I've ever read. Well done!
| turblety wrote:
| Ahh cool, I look forward to Docker, Inc. destroying yet another
| company.
|
| Yes. I'm still bitter about Tutum. Absolutely loved Tutum.
|
| 1. https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/21/docker-acquires-
| unikernel-...
|
| 2. https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/21/docker-acquires-cloud-
| star...
|
| 3. https://thenewstack.io/docker-acquires-sdn-technology-
| startu...
|
| 4.
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150312005148/en/Doc...
| moondev wrote:
| Did Tumtum agree to be purchased, or are you suggesting this
| was some kind of hostile takeover?
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| I have no idea what Tutum is (was?), but why don't you guys
| build it "again". If you miss it, there's a clear need. Go for
| it.
| bovermyer wrote:
| You seem to be laboring under the false impression that
| people can replicate a system perfectly just by having used
| it once upon a time.
| goolz wrote:
| I would imagine for myriad financial, personal and most of
| all technological reasons (of which you would not know, as by
| your own admissions, "you have no idea" what it was).
| kristianpaul wrote:
| I really miss Tutum :'(
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