The container ecosystem

• Introduction
• The Docker ecosystem
• Moby vs. Docker
• Exercise in brand management
• What if ...
• From Docker to Moby
• Other examples
• Docker CE vs Docker EE
• The CNCF

Introduction

In this chapter, we will talk about a few actors of the container ecosystem.

We have (arbitrarily) decided to focus on two groups:

• the Docker ecosystem,

• the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and its projects.

The Docker ecosystem

Moby vs. Docker

• Docker Inc. (the company) started Docker (the open source project).

• At some point, it became necessary to differentiate between:

  • the open source project (code base, contributors...),

  • the product that we use to run containers (the engine),

  • the platform that we use to manage containerized applications,

  • the brand.

Exercise in brand management

Questions:

• What is the brand of the car on the previous slide?

• What kind of engine does it have?

• Would you say that it's a safe or unsafe car?

• Harder question: can you drive from the US West to East coasts with it?

The answers to these questions are part of the Tesla brand.

What if ...

• The blueprints for Tesla cars were available for free.

• You could legally build your own Tesla.

• You were allowed to customize it entirely.

  (Put a combustion engine, drive it with a game pad ...)

• You could even sell the customized versions.

• ... And call your customized version "Tesla".

Would we give the same answers to the questions on the previous slide?

From Docker to Moby

• Docker Inc. decided to split the brand.

• Moby is the open source project.

  (= Components and libraries that you can use, reuse, customize, sell ...)

• Docker is the product.

  (= Software that you can use, buy support contracts ...)

• Docker is made with Moby.

• When Docker Inc. improves the Docker products, it improves Moby.

  (And vice versa.)

Other examples

• Read the Docs is an open source project to generate and host documentation.

• You can host it yourself (on your own servers).

• You can also get hosted on readthedocs.org.

• The maintainers of the open source project often receive support requests from users of the hosted product ...

• ... And the maintainers of the hosted product often receive support requests from users of self-hosted instances.

• Another example:

  WordPress.com is a blogging platform that is owned and hosted online by Automattic. It is run on WordPress, an open source piece of software used by bloggers. (Wikipedia)

Docker CE vs Docker EE

• Docker CE = Community Edition.

• Available on most Linux distros, Mac, Windows.

• Optimized for developers and ease of use.

• Docker EE = Enterprise Edition.

• Available only on a subset of Linux distros + Windows servers.

  (Only available when there is a strong partnership to offer enterprise-class support.)

• Optimized for production use.

• Comes with additional components: security scanning, RBAC ...

The CNCF

• Non-profit, part of the Linux Foundation; founded in December 2015.

  The Cloud Native Computing Foundation builds sustainable ecosystems and fosters a community around a constellation of high-quality projects that orchestrate containers as part of a microservices architecture.

  CNCF is an open source software foundation dedicated to making cloud-native computing universal and sustainable.

• Home of Kubernetes (and many other projects now).

• Funded by corporate memberships.