Comment by spb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spb | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think you're reading too much - or too little - into this if you think they're "slinging mud". Any fork is going to list its reasons for the fork- if they didn't have issues with how Docker is heading, why would they be making the fork in the first place?

If they just quietly gave an ambiguous non-disparaging statement like "we're forking because we're unhappy with the direction Docker is taking", it would seem frivolous and ill-considered, and nobody would know on what points the fork would be aiming to distinguish itself.

This statement needs to be made, the way it was made, for the same reasons any project announcement is made: it needs to announce that it exists, and why it exists. It's the same as Docker's "debut" blog post(s).

Every schism needs its 95 Theses, and the odds favor the ones who can read them, understand them, and take them into consideration.

---

Disclaimer (re https://twitter.com/kenperkins/status/539528757711622145): I make edits to my comments after posting, usually posting a line or two then fleshing them out over time. If I make a change that conflicts with a statement in an earlier revision, I'll note it: otherwise I'm pretty much just composing live.

It's really bugging me people are using the word "fork". This is not a fork, it's a competing container format, there isn't any docker code in Rocket AFAIK. Even @shykes called it a fork in a comment, it's not somebody taking your code and doing something different with it, they are doing their own implementation. Ideas aren't "forked", code is.

As to everything else, I manage CoreOS clusters with docker for now, and while this came out of the blue (seems like for Docker folks as well) I'm happy to see what happens as a result. I'm not sure why there are hurt feelings over the announcement, didn't find anything particularly in bad taste and what exactly is wrong with promoting your new product?

The CoreOS team isn't under any obligation to docker to contribute however anyone on the docker team want's them too. Even if these issues have been discussed before they've clearly taken a different path and that's within their right, not sure where mud is being slung. Where this will lead who knows, but hopefully there will still be good collaboration between different groups as they pursue their own goals that align with their needs.

EDIT: I haven't actually looked at the code, so if somebody wants to prove what I'm saying wrong please do. I'm basing what I know off the announcement.

IMO rewriting something from scratch is like forking but worse because it's impossible to merge later. And Rocket is definitely forking the Docker community.

That's great, except forks can be merged later.

Yes, that's what I said.

If it can't be merged, it's not a fork, that's the key part of forks (well, not entirely, but the lack of shared code means it's not a fork by my definition).

That said, you're on point: this is forking the community. A hard fork, too.

By this definition, linux is a fork of windows and is inferior because it cannot be merged back to windows.

Often, starting from scratch is better. This is especially true when the goals or philosophy of the two projects are fundamentally different and incompatible, even if they perform similar tasks. Again, linux vs windows example applies.

I don't have a horse in this race, but from what I read this is the part that can be construed as "slinging mud". I've put some [read between the lines] comments in square brackets:

  "Unfortunately, a simple re-usable component is not how things are playing
   out. Docker [much to our dismay] now is building tools for launching cloud
   servers, systems for clustering, and a wide range of functions: building
   images, running images, uploading, downloading, and eventually even overlay
   networking, all compiled into one [big and nasty] monolithic binary running
   primarily as root [how insecure is that?] on your server. The standard
   container manifesto was removed [those flip-floppers!]. We should stop
   talking about Docker containers, and start talking about the Docker
   Platform [since we can focus attention on our efforts that way]. It is not
   becoming the simple composable building block we had envisioned [which puts
   our offerings at a disadvantage]."

  "We still believe in the original premise of containers that Docker
   introduced, so [unlike those silly Docker people] we are doing something
   about it."

Later on, they specifically say:

  "the Docker process model ... is fundamentally flawed"
  "We cannot in good faith continue to support Docker’s broken security model..."

All these may be valid criticisms, but even ignoring my potentially off-base annotations it's difficult to read their announcement as anything other than "Docker is broken and can't be fixed". It's reminiscent of political attack ads which focus on the shortcomings of your opponent rather than the strengths of your own platform.

"Docker is broken and can't be fixed"

Or, taking the announcement as intended, "We were interested in the direction Docker started in, they have since pivoted. We were more interested in the direction than Docker itself".

Yes, there is some mild-mannered disparagement in the announcement, but it's hard to characterise it as 'slinging mud', and it's not really fair to disparage it with the name-calling you're injecting.

I think they spent plenty of time talking about the advantages of their approach. The comment at the bottom there was only in response to an FAQ of "why not just work from the docker you already use?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com