One of Docker's biggest problems is that internally they have fomented a culture of "users are stupid" which is immediately apparent if you interact with their developers on GitHub.
It makes me sad that you believe that. We're not perfect but we try very hard to keep our users happy.
Are there specific issues that you could point out, so that I can get a sense of what you saw that you didn't like?
Keep in mind that anyone can participate in github issues, not just Docker employees, and although we have a pretty strict code of conduct, being dismissive about another participant's use case is not grounds for moderation.
EDIT: sorry if this came across as dismissive, that wasn't the intention. We regularly get called out for comments made by non-employees, it's a common problem on the github repo.
The third paragraph particularly is spectacular, as you manage to be dismissive about being dismissive.
Incroyable.
It looks like now is not a good time for me to participate in this discussion. Instead I'll make a list of things we can improve so that the next HN post about Docker is a more positive one.
You should just be like, "Hey folks, we're sorry as hell we let you down. I'm here now and I'm listening. What has made you sad, and what can we improve?"
People love that sh--stuff.
That's just my advice. I don't even use Docker. I just like to see warm-fuzzy success, eh?
But this isn't about you, or your feels, or what you think is going on.
All that's happening is people are trying to communicate with you and you're not listening. You're doing your best, I don't doubt that, but you've got to step back, regroup, and come at the problem from another angle.
Don't get defensive, don't make excuses. "When you make a mistake, take of your pants and roll around in it." ;-) Give people the benefit of the doubt that they mostly know what they're complaining about (even if they don't.)
It's a pain-in-the-ass, but it's the only way to deal with this kind of systemic (mis-?)perception in your community.
I don't even think it's intentional, really, but I have never once seen a response by Solomon to criticism of Docker that did not dismiss the content and messenger in some way. These things are hard to get right and I'm not perfect, so I don't even really know what advice to offer and I'm far from qualified. I am very frequently dismissive of criticism as well and have had to put a lot of work into actively accepting it, so I can at least understand how hard it is.
I outright told him his initial reaction to Rocket, to use an example, directly caused me to plan for a future without Docker. Companies are defined by their executives, and a lot of Docker's behaviors become clearer when you consider some of the context around Solomon's personal style.
[0]: the most productive example being https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8789181
I told my sister last night, jokingly, "I think I made a co-founder of Docker cry on HN today." (I also explained what Docker and Hacker News are a little. She likes me so she didn't call me a nerd to my face.)
Honestly, I was just amused at the reply evidencing (or seeming to) the very attitude the OP was complaining of, it was incredible.
- You shouldn't have to read through pages of posts to find potential workarounds.
- You shouldn't have to count comments to guess if there are a lot of people affected by an issue.
- You shouldn't have to read comments, then wonder which posts were an official developer response or a comment from another end user.
- There should be some way to communicate easily that "this issue has our attention, but dealing with it is de-prioritized because ..."
In this instance, you can see it's a security issue and it will be tough to convince Docker to change it, but at this point it's two years later and people are still griping about it, so maybe it's time to put some attention on it. There are a few suggestions for seemingly reasonable updates, but nobody is championing any of them, presumably because there's no indication other than comment activity that Docker will consider any updates on this issue whatsoever.
I'm not sure myself what the right thing to do from Docker's perspective would be, but this is clearly one of those issues that has worn through the attention span of the development team. Someone either needs to stand up and say "we're not changing anything here" or "we're looking for a solution" - no bug report should be open that long.
Can you please add Facebook connectivity to Docker?
Thanks.
If there is a problem with the way the Docker open source project is run, it is with the amount of small but serious bugs that affect subsets of your users. This is probably due to you guys overextending.
Responding that you are saddened by this guys issue with his perception of the 'culture' in your team is just craziness. No one will be helped by this. The only thing that will help is showing that you guys are running a tight ship. Maybe hire an extra person on two to maintain your GH issue garden and proceed with making Docker the successful business we all believe it can be.
Docker may be on top now but if you don't cater to the needs of your nonpaying users, it will be short lived. This includes taking seriously feature requests which don't necessarily serve enterprise.
You can find me on GitHub.
I have seen many instances of individuals with no affiliation to an open-source project being negative or rude and therefore giving a negative impression of the community or parent company. As a project owner or maintainer this is a really difficult thing to see happening, and can be difficult to address and prevent. So I personally think shykes makes a valid point. I wouldn't take this as dismissive. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
I also think we should cut maintainers a bit of slack. Imagine your are managing an open source project with over 10,000 logged issues and even more in the community forums. It is draining to spend all day dealing with complaints and issues and can be a thankless job. Maintainers often try to put their best foot forward, but it isn't an easy and they are human, and make mistakes and say things they regret. I'm not saying it is justified, just try to put yourself in their shoes.
I've personally logged a few issues with the Docker team and have also found the interactions to be respectful. There are times when I've asked for features and they have certainly played devils advocate, but that is to be expected with any project that is trying to prioritize their work and constantly fighting feature creep.
This was a reply by @tiborvass in https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/8887
Can you possibly get any more dismissive?
If people are feeling the "users are stupid", combined with what looks like coverup culture, I find Docker's blog posts less and less credible.
For example, there was a recent blog post about An independent security review comparing Docker to other similar technologies, including rkt. The conclusion of the post was that Docker is secure by default. (I'll leave it to the reader's own opinion whether that is true or not; this is not the issue I am pointing out).
What is so weird is that, nearly two years after the fact, the tone in that blog post was still as if CoreOS had betrayed them. And while I get there are hurt feelings involved, this is not a high school popularity contest. When combined with arrogance and coverup culture, I can see Docker moving in a direction that drives them further and further from relevancy.
Based on what I'm hearing here about Docker Swarm, Swarm is basically a great advertising for K8S or Mesos. No one there is pretending that multi-node orchestration is an easy problem. If the divergence from the community continues, I can see lots of people fed up and going over to rkt, or something else that works just as well.
Which particular problem? The crappy performance/CPU usage one(s), or something else? Having used various different approaches (docker in vmware linux/virtualbox), the d4m (osxfs?) one seemed to be the least broken for general dev stuff.
Hopefully not more issues I need to keep a lookout for.
There is also the bit about host networking. Since Docker for Mac runs a transparent Linux, the host networking goes there instead. That thread ended up in a big, roaring silence.
I'm not saying this will necessarily stop me from using a project, but it definitely does not create any loyalty.
Compare this to say Rails, where I've had really positive experiences with the maintainers.