No one is making you run Docker Desktop. It is not holding you hostage. There are alternatives in this very thread. Comparing it to ransomware is absurd.
I'll tell you what's wrong here : Docker is a fantastic technology but it simply couldn't find a suitable market tactic.
Now it resolves to this shitty practices. I don't even know how you can begin to think that it would add ANY burden to them NOT to run the update on your computer.
And here is my problem : It's my computer, I decide what is ran on it or not.
Next day we have some idiot getting keys on the docker update system and we simply have built a technologic crash because suddenly nobody can decide wether that update is ran or not.
Keeping control away of the user is the most stupid thing there is.
Absolutely nothing docker has done contradicts this. You want docker desktop, you install docker desktop. You don’t, you don’t.
Docker has no obligation to provide a piece of software (for free!) with exactly the feature set you want. I can’t understand how anyone could think they do.
To clarify, you installed a piece of software with this capability. Thus, you did not install a piece of software you wanted.
Furthermore, Docker has the right to write software that functions and updates as they wish. You have the right to not install it. It's really that simple.
A lot of software today is auto-updating, where updates cannot be disabled, if they can even be delayed. It's the developers' choice whether they want their software to function like this, your choice whether you want to install it.
Sure it does. It updates the software automatically with seemingly no way of stopping the behavior without first paying a fee.
Regardless of the intent of the individual installing the software on their machine, once installed it absolutely executes on its own; there's no denying this.
Previously, ransomware (and some games/media) were tge only software products that asked for a higher price tag to not install extra code the user did not want on their machine.
It is a fundamentally predatory practice, because the developers completely misunderstand consent. Just because I have some or a version of your software running, doesn't mean I want to invite you the hypothetical software developer to live on my system, auto updating things from under me.
It's a pattern that has fought harder and harder amongst softdev people to ignore the sanctity of other people's computer for the user's own good that needs to die.
Not comparing it to ransomware is absurd, frankly. The more it's normalized, the more people will reach for it as a business model.