Business
Refocusing Docker on developer-first and growth
In this episode of Finestock, host Alex DeCoviaque sits down with Scott Johnston, CEO of Docker, to discuss the company's transformative journey towards a developer-first approach. Scott shares i...
Refocusing Docker on developer-first and growth
Business •
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Interactive Transcript
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Okay, we are back.
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This is Finestock.
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I'm Alex DeCoviaque, the host of the show and the editor-in-chief here at ChangeLaw.com.
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Today I'm joined by Scott Johnston, the CEO of Docker.
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Scott shares his journey to the CEO role for Docker, how he's leading the company to not
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only grow revenue, but to also invest in developer facing features.
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He talks about their shift from enterprise sales focused to a PLG driven model.
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And we even talk about Docker desktop, the competition of faces, and the struggle they face
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when considering making it open source.
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A massive thank you to our friends and partners at Fastly and Fly.
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This pod got to you fast because Fastly is fast all around the world.
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Check them out at Fastly.com.
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And our friends over at Fly help us put our app and our database closer users all over
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the world in a container with no ops.
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Learn more at fly.io.
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Hey friends, I'm here with one of our partners and sponsors, Jason Bosco, co-founder and CEO
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of TypeSense.
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You may remember Jason from Episode 505 of the ChangeLaw.
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We talked about TypeSense being truly open source search.
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And that's kind of where we got interested in TypeSense because we've been hitting bottlenecks
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and issues with Algolia.
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And so I reached out to Jason and said, Hey, Jason, we love to work with you and part
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with you.
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But Jason, tell the listeners here why you all build TypeSense.
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What do you believe?
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So we believe that fast search as your type experiences need to be widely available and
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adopted by as many sites and apps as possible.
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And what I mean by such as your type is you type in a letter and it returns results
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right away and say less than 50 milliseconds or 100 milliseconds.
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And we've tried building experiences like this in the past with other products.
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You know, there's solar, there's elastic search, there's Algolia and all of them are
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good in different respects.
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But they either are very complex to deploy or they're hard to scale or they're very
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expensive to use even for moderate scale.
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So that's why we built TypeSense.
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We open-source it.
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We made sure that you can run TypeSense locally or if you don't want to worry about infrastructure,
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we also have TypeSense Cloud.
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So you have Cloud and you have open source and you ship binaries in your open source that
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you actually use in your cloud with extra features of course.
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But what was making you think that you should build cloud in the first place?
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Based on what users have told us over the last several years, many folks wanted us to
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host a search service.
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So we started building TypeSense Cloud.
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So whether you self-host or use TypeSense Cloud, it is the same binary that we run in TypeSense
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Cloud that we also publish open source.
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So the feature set is identical, but in TypeSense Cloud, of course, we manage the service for you.
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So you'd have to worry about infrastructure and then we give you a nice UI to manage
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your data and then we give you pool-based access control, the single sign on, more collaboration
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aspects.
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But regardless of whether you self-host it or use TypeSense Cloud, we want to bring
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this technology to as broad an audience as possible without having to worry about cost.
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And that's one of the reasons we decided to partner with you Adam and talk about TypeSense
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here.
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I love the idea of getting this into as many developers' hands as possible.
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The fact that you have blazing fast in-mem research like you do that's open source that
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compete with the likes of a last search or a goalie that you could just post yourself
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if you want to.
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So awesome.
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Of course, we're excited to partner with you.
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We're using TypeSense Cloud, which is awesome and very fortunate to have a chance to work
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with you.
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On this project, obviously, we have so much warm store for our search features.
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So we're barely scratching the surface.
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But hey, listen, check out TypeSense at TypeSense.org or at Cloud.TypeSense.org.
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I think Jason's awesome and has an awesome team.
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And of course, we're using TypeSense.
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So we think you should check it out too.
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Again, TypeSense.org or Cloud.TypeSense.org.
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So I'm here with Scott Johnston.
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Scott, I'm so excited to talk to you big fan of Doc or big fan of this new doc, I suppose.
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So welcome to the show.
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Welcome to the final talk.
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Thanks so much, Adam.
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I'm a huge fan of your show as well.
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So right back at you, and it's an honor to be here and get a chance to chat.
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I was excited to hear that James Log is in your podcast feed.
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So I mean, that we're like the Docker desktop of podcasts, right?
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We're on as many developers' ears as possible.
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I feel like we're kind of a Docker desktop in a way, which is kind of interesting.
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Love that.
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Love that.
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Yeah.
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I mean, developer community is so widespread and diverse and so many different types of
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developers, types of languages.
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But I feel the change log kind of speaks to the core ethos if you will with developers.
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Yeah.
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And that's why I enjoy listening to it, even though they haven't let me touch live code
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for decades at this point.
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Well, that's a bummer.
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That's a bummer.
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CEOs who code are always awesome.
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The world is probably safer than I'm not touching live code.
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I do.
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I do in the advent of code every year.
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I do kind of whip out, you know, my own editor and such and try to stay breast to breast
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with our engineering team.
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But trust me, I'm glad that they're winning that one.
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Mm hmm.
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We have lost the cover in the show.
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We got limited time, but I do want to give our listeners context to you.
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You know, sometimes people will, you know, just use the tool, just use the software and
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not really pay much attention to the people behind things.
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Now you came to Docker by way of puppet in 2013.
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So the earliest days of earliest days for Docker, I think Docker was open sourced in 2013.
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I think like may roughly.
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We actually had a Solomon on this network, not this podcast around that same time.
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So we've been in the trenches with you and with Docker and with Solomon with everybody
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really involved.
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I don't know, Solomon's not still around, but take us into your particular journey with
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Docker.
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I mean, as far back as you want to go, I just want to give context to who you are as
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you know, but you didn't obviously start to see you.
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You started in products.
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Yeah.
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Give us some of that depth.
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Yeah.
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I'll tell you make it brief.
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I'm not going on, but you know, guide me along the way.
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So I actually started as a developer.
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That was my first gig actually while I was still in school.
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And my first being gig was doing Fortran for when the universities.
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But I was always fascinated.
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So I, you know, rolling it back even further, first learned a program basic on a TRS 80
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in the neighbor's house and then Apple II in the school.
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And eventually, I pestered my parents so much that they finally got an IBM, the first
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IBM PC.
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And I just, I've mirror was just being fascinated by two things.
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One is the democratization.
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I didn't, you know, kid can't formalize as the time, but, but just such powerful technology
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in the hands of everyone.
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I thought that was crazy, crazy exciting.
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And the second is, it was magic, right?
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Type in a couple lines of text and then that turns into a thing, right?
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And the thing works and runs.
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You compile it.
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It goes, I just remember, well, I can sit as a kid and high school and just bang out
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some lines that code and I can do music and I can do the science experiments.
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All through this magical device site that that is stuck with me since the beginning.
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At puppet, we were very much trying to help developers and upskit along DevOps and trying
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to help expedite the movement of code into production.
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And as you said, Docker's open source March 2013 and the summer, so literally a couple
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months later, while at puppet, I saw a Docker start to show up in the puppet accounts.
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I was like, Oh, what's going on here?
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Doug and I'm like, Oh, this is going to change things.
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Yeah.
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And six months later, February 2014 joined Docker as employee was one of about 20 of us,
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so Solomon, myself, the CEO at the time.
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And then everyone else is kind of open source engineer.
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And that's where the journey began for me, at least, February 2014.
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Headed product, as you said, and had a number of different product rules.
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And the company had it ups and downs and probably not enough time on the podcast to go through
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the whole history.
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But long story short, we had an OK business in 2019, wasn't a great business.
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And importantly, it wasn't really benefiting from the love that the developers had of the
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product and the had of the experience.
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We were all focused on ops and data center deployments and production.
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And those are good problems to solve and they're fantastic companies solving that problem.
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But we arrived at this point in 2019 where we decided, Hey, what if we stood back, divested
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the business of this part that isn't working great and instead turned around and focused
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just 100% on developers.
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What if we just did that and just really just serve them and served the user experience,
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how they want to consume technology, solving their problems?
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Like, wouldn't that be an exciting opportunity?
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And the board asked me at the time to step in and serve the company from a CEO, from product
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to CEO.
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You speak of that as if you led that pitch.
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Was that your pitch to do that or how did you get the attention of the board to become
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CEO?
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Like, how did that happen?
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No, sorry.
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I don't want to take any credit.
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We had discussed a number of things to do with the company and I can't get into too many
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details about all the different things we considered.
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And one of them was like, Hey, there's all this bottoms up consumption going on over here
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and we're ignoring and we're not paying attention to this.
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And there's all this love that we can see in the social media and in developer comments.
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And it was more of a conversation.
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And I don't want to say that I pitched the board.
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Is conversation in the board said, Well, what if Scott, what if we focused on that?
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And do what would you would you be willing to serve as CEO in focusing on that?
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And I was like, wow, that sounds challenging, exciting, stretching, growing.
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That sounds really exciting opportunity.
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You'd never been CEO before, right?
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This is first time CEO for you.
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I had never been a successful CEO.
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I had pre-puppet gone up and down Sanio Road or the VC corridor is pitching three companies,
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none of which succeeded or got off the ground.
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So, you know, CEO and maybe name only back then, but just was the first time as CEO
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that actually working business.
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Gotcha.
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Well, it's definitely been a resurgence.
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I mean, simply if you just look at revenue only, it's a resurgence, right?
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I mean, very low revenue in the days you mentioned, 2019 era, challenging to monetize the product,
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not impossible, but challenging.
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And quite the turnaround by simply focusing on where the love was coming from, which was
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developers, as you said, bottoms up.
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And I joked about where the the Docker desktop of podcasts, because I mean, you've got
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20 plus million install base right now.
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That's just rough numbers.
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I don't know if that's how true or accurate that number is, but that's a lot, right?
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When Github was acquired in 2018, I think they had like 30-ish million or something like
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that.
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I mean, you're in a sweet spot right now.
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And on a lot of developers, desktops, whether it's Mac, Windows, or Linux.
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That's right.
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So we did have a good growth in revenue, but really importantly, I think it's important
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to share with your listeners that the growth in revenue allowed us to fund additional investments
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in the developer experience.
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And so even that top of funnel number you cited, that almost double since we started in 2019.
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So I was like 12 or 13 million back there.
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And now as you said, it sits up 20 million monthly active.
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And so it wasn't just focusing on the monetization piece.
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It was also like, how can we invest in additional developer facing exciting features and capability?
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So what's as simple as an example that we brought Docker desktop from Mac on x86 to
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Docker desktop on Mac on arm, right?
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And that took considerable investment to like make sure we were right there when Apple
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had those arm Mac books ready to go that we were on it within.
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I wouldn't say within a month we were ready to go and fired up.
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We invested a lot in build.
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And so build kit is one of the popular technologies we have.
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And build kit allows developers not only to build locally, but also build in a shared
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cache with their team, right?
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So you get you get a lot of speed instead of taking 20 minutes for your build.
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You can take it two seconds by using the shared cache.
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So my point in this item is that that we wanted to make sure we are serving the developer
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community top to bottom, both upstream open source freemium devs, but also those who are
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in large organizations and who pay us for the the license of Docker desktop.
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The biggest change that I can understand with let's just call it Docker 2.0.
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I think that's been turned out there for you all.
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Do you take that term happily or is that like, I guess it kind of makes sense, right?
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Docker 2.0.
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Yeah, Docker 2.0 works.
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You know, at the call of the the evolved Docker perhaps to kind of give credit, it
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requires to because we built this last, this latest chapter of the company on the shoulders
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of the who came before it.
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Like I mean, Solomon did a fantastic job to this day.
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We continue to benefit from this previous CEO's built up the company hired some fantastic
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talent.
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So we want to recognize that that there's the assets that that team developed gave us
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the basis, right?
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Gave us the opportunity to kind of grow our new business in the last three and a half years.
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Yeah.
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I look at it like in many ways Docker is today is roughly for this is how I look at
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it.
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You see, you create me if I'm wrong, but roughly a 4.5 year old company with a 10.5 year
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tech advantage.
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Like you've been out there for quite a while, but you know, the current revenue and if
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we just simply this is a business, right?
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Not just open source, but a business and a thriving business.
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We look at this new this evolved Docker Docker 2.0.
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However, anybody wants to determine either way, it's very much a different even a business,
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even a revenue and even a head count perspective.
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So in many ways, the underlying tech won the hearts of minds of developers, DevOps, unified,
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deployment platforms.
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I mean, so much technologically, but as a company, I would look at you like kind of like
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a 4.5 year old company, roughly in terms of this newness, this new revenue model, like
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Utoli pivot that you totally flip the switch in 2019.
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Can you speak to how you changed in 2019 from a enterprise salesperson focused direction
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to this PLG version of it, which is product led growth, essentially, that's what the terminology
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means for that to now be it, I think last time I checked 135 million dollars in revenue,
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how did that happen?
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How did that choice get made?
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You're the new CEO in 2018.
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How did all that kind of come into fruition?
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Yeah, yeah.
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So a lot of pain on the front end of that.
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So when we did the the divestiture recapitalization of the pivot, we unfortunately cleaved off a
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whole set of commercial technology, the Docker enterprise data center product, data center
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and production product.
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We unfortunately had to say goodbye to 316 employees.
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So we went from 420 employees down to 60 and that was incredibly painful.
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And we also we sold off all the customers.
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We had 600 some customers that had revenue associated with it and all of that went
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to a buyer.
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And so as painful as that was, it was intentional in the spirit of letting the company shed
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its past and just focus, simplifying focus on the needs of developers.
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Because as you know, right, like there's no such thing as one and done.
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You always have a customer you have to take care of or legacy code you have to maintain
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or like right.
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And we just knew we couldn't make forward progress if we brought all that along.
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So we made a say goodbye to all that.
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And then we really got back to basics, Adam.
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But we knew then with that type of severe pivot that we had to take care of the people
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first, the employees first.
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And so we really make sure we communicated really and often with the remaining employees.
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We sat down and started rebuilding our culture.
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And we really thought about, okay, what is important for us as a team as we go on this next
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chapter of the journey together with the pain of the pivot kind of sharpener and as
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memory.
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And so the first virtue we came up with is like humility.
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We wanted to be able to acknowledge our mistakes, listen to our community, listen to each
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other and really be honest with ourselves and just what we're seeing.
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The second though, maybe to your question was developer obsession.
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And that second virtue started as customer obsession.
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We said, no, no, no, that's not sharp enough.
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And so within a month, we said, it's developer obsession.
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And it virtues as with other values, other frameworks, other companies use their design
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sets that executive CEOs don't have to be in the room for employees to have guide posts
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and guidance of terms with direction.
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So we'll have, I won't be in the room and employees will ask, well, is this developer obsession?
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Like, let's talk through that.
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What does that mean in this, this decision or this feature or this trade off that we're
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trying to make?
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The third one is open collaboration and fourth is bias for considered action.
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And then the bias for considered action is there because we're at 60 people again, we
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had an opportunity to move quickly to listen, make decisions.
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And we wanted to take advantage of that small size.
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And so that was the start of it.
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And then we also, we were very kind of transparent and humble and vulnerable with the community,
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particularly the Docker captains who are kind of our Uber community members.
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And we sat with them and said, like, okay, developer obsession, serving developers, as you
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touch with products, as you work with the community, like, what are you hearing that
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needs to be addressed?
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What are you hearing that we need to focus on?
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And so really, I mean, it sounds kind of obvious, Adam, but it took a lot of work and
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focus and saying no to potential distractions to focus on these points.
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And they're after kind of flow of the product roadmap, right?
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We've found ways in which we need to smooth the rough edges off the products, found things
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we could do to improve the product experience, entirely new products.
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And then on the go to market side, we knew that developers don't want to talk to salespeople,
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developers don't want to have contracts and paper going back and forth.
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And so we very much focused on a self-service credit card based bottoms up where if they
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wanted more value than was in the free product, they could swap a credit card for five bucks
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a seat a month.
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And if they wanted value for a team, which typically is like private repos and additional
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security management, they could swap a credit card for $9 a seat a month.
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And so hopefully you're hearing kind of the intentionality of both features that serve
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developers on their day to day, but also a go-to-market model that respected where they were
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and gave them the freedom to make economic decisions on their own timeframe was really
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the impetus and the way we kind of jumpstarted things three and a half years ago.
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And maybe just to zoom back and share with you kind of where we are that we're holding
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both those true both the monetization and well as the community is on another status.
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We have about 14 and a half registered developers.
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So the 20 some at the top of the funnel are anonymous subset of those register with us.
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14 and a half million register is about 1.1 million of those are subscribers, meaning
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paid seats across pro team and business, which means 13 some million are still using
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the free product, the free open source, which is entirely by design.
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Like it's entirely like, hey, have at have a great time.
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If you find there's additional security management features that you find valuable swipe
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a card and go.
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So I wanted a little bit there toward the end, but hope that shares with you kind of where
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we were three and a half years ago and how we set about restarting this next chapter.
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Yeah.
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Well, I'm trying to get clarity on the struggle really because I mean, four and a half
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years old, if you agree with my terminology that four and a half year old right now,
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since the the change in 2019, you know, you're you're really much in a new pivot of the
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business. So in a lot of ways, like you said, you had to shed a lot of what was incorrect
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about the direction of the business.
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And there's a lot of hard, you know, hard choices in there and a lot of change for folks
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involved in there.
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And of course, that's very hard for everybody to go through.
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Yeah.
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But for a business to survive, you have to say no, right?
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What you did was you shed the distractions so that you can focus and you can't focus
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if you're distracted, right?
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That's right.
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And I'm trying to bring clarity that, you know, obviously through this questioning because
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today there's there's a lot of shake up I suppose around Docker, like especially Docker
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desktop.
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There's a lot of, I guess there was some recent concern about it not being open source
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and in 2021, whenever you change some of the revenue model, you know, there's a lot
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of pushback and negativity and there's spin off, you know, open source versions of Docker
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desktop pod man.
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I think I just saw when recently was like orb, orb stack, which is, you know, great,
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like you won competition, but what I want to speak to is, is I suppose this struggle to,
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and obviously not struggle because you've got great revenue now, but just the struggle
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to monetize your product when it's open source, when it's perceived as open source, Docker
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desktop was free for so long for pretty much everybody.
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And then you said, well, we have to learn how to make money in this new pivot, right?
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Sure.
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And in 2021, you made that change.
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Can you speak to that struggle and that change and how that got you to where you're at
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now from a revenue standpoint?
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Yeah, there's a couple of good threads in there.
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First is Docker desktop is an engineered product that includes many upstream open source
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projects, right?
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So it includes Docker engine, which is open source includes Docker compotes, which is open
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source includes Docker build, which is open source, and it includes a Kubernetes stack,
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which is open source.
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And so there are all our alternatives today.
spk_0
In fact, you can use our very same open source tech to stand up on Linux VM on your laptop
spk_0
with our Mac or Windows.
spk_0
You can today take all those open source components and build a proxy, right, or a close
spk_0
proximate user experience around some of the tools.
spk_0
The close source nature at the time was engineered around, was really focused on the integration
spk_0
of those open source components with the local file system networking compute on the Mac
spk_0
and Windows.
spk_0
There's a lot of hardcore engineering in there and we thought that was valuable.
spk_0
And so as the reason we close source it, but the real driver that you're referring to
spk_0
in 2020 was really, there's a developer experience part of a laptop or a local experience, but
spk_0
then these large organizations need tools to manage these environments at scale.
spk_0
And so what's a specific example, single sign on, right?
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Single sign on is something large organizations used to kind of authenticate key jacular
spk_0
users in their various assets, turns out at least in our experience, most developers
spk_0
don't care if single sign is open source or not.
spk_0
So that's an example of what became a close source feature for the large business customers
spk_0
who are happy to pay for it.
spk_0
Well, notice that that doesn't take anything away from the end developer experience, which
spk_0
is still free.
spk_0
And if free and Docker desktop isn't sufficient, because I mentioned before, like 13.5
spk_0
million are still using Docker desktop completely for free.
spk_0
For sure.
spk_0
It's a big, it's a big free base.
spk_0
spk_0
Then they can just reassemble, they can reassemble that experience from the open source
spk_0
tools.
spk_0
And so the monetization was geared not towards monetizing the developer, but monetizing
spk_0
the managers and the security folks who have budget for paying for features to help manage
spk_0
and scale out these development environments and large organizations.
spk_0
So as a so as an example, another example, just to be concrete is support for a virtual
spk_0
desktop.
spk_0
So VDI, right?
spk_0
So VMware has a VDI stack, Citroca has a VDI stack, Azure has a VDI stack.
spk_0
And in large regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, they don't allow
spk_0
developers to have laptops.
spk_0
They have VDI because they don't want the laptops to walk home at night and they don't
spk_0
want the code to walk home at night.
spk_0
And so that's an example of a manager facing feature or an app-priced facing feature
spk_0
that is monetized in the subscription.
spk_0
But most developers don't care about that.
spk_0
And so we're not trying to monetize the developer by that.
spk_0
So I'll pause there Adam.
spk_0
We'll pick as a couple examples of the monetization is geared towards managers, not geared towards
spk_0
monetizing the end developer directly.
spk_0
I guess where I struggle, I suppose, is not to say, hey, Scott, open source man, got
spk_0
open sources thing.
spk_0
It's not about that really.
spk_0
It's about, as I research your story personally and I research Docker story, as an organization,
spk_0
I see more and more how important your current growth has been in regards to Docker desktop
spk_0
that how important that tech is.
spk_0
And if it is ubiquitous, so Docker has won, it's very clear in terms of how you deliver
spk_0
applications to production, how you run things.
spk_0
I mean, I use Docker daily.
spk_0
My click server runs in Docker.
spk_0
Thank you so much.
spk_0
By the way, I love that.
spk_0
I mean, it's just you've made hardcore tech that's just impossible for folks like me.
spk_0
I'm not in DevOps.
spk_0
I'm a developer, but that's not by normal thing.
spk_0
But I find fun and home labby things and tinkering and stuff like that.
spk_0
That's my exposure to this ops world, so to speak.
spk_0
The point I'm getting at, I suppose, is that it seems to me that Docker desktop is paramount.
spk_0
It is the bedrock of everything you're building upon.
spk_0
And while I understand, and I hear you on single sign on these other features, and I'm
spk_0
wonder why you have these competitors who want to come in a, we need an open source
spk_0
version of Docker desktop, or whatever it might be.
spk_0
And the easiest way to squash that would just simply be to be open source.
spk_0
Did you consider BSL license, for example, if you need to have protection, did you consider
spk_0
the licensing?
spk_0
That's what I guess I don't understand.
spk_0
Can you speak to the struggle of that choice?
spk_0
Yeah, it's a good one.
spk_0
And it's one that we spent a long time, not only internally, but talking with community
spk_0
members, talking with a lot of folks in different parts of the community on the DevOps side,
spk_0
developers side, and different parts of developer world, open source developers, as well as commercial
spk_0
developers, developers who build commercial products.
spk_0
And the long short of it is that we felt that because Docker desktop was still available
spk_0
for free, that that would give the community for call a 99.9% of community, everything
spk_0
that they still desired.
spk_0
Because as you know, there's a power law of contributions on the internet, right?
spk_0
So 90% can kind of read only, consume only, 9% might make a comment, and actually 1% actually
spk_0
contribute, right?
spk_0
And so if it's that 1% that are contributing open source, and the fact that Docker desktop
spk_0
has a very large surface area of open source technologies already, I listed them off before.
spk_0
We felt the combination of free Docker desktop and the fact that it's based on open source
spk_0
technologies would be a big enough surface area, right, for the open source and the free
spk_0
communities to still get what they need from the product.
spk_0
And I guess standing back, the data suggests that maybe not for everyone, but call it again
spk_0
99% were there because of the was it 14 some million registered developers with us, 13
spk_0
and a half million are still using Docker desktop for free, right?
spk_0
And the upstream technologies, Docker engine, Docker build, Docker compose, all that
spk_0
being used for free and contributing to them as well.
spk_0
So you know, one of my execs has a phrase reserve the right to be smarter in the future.
spk_0
And so we're always are listening, we're always trying to gauge like, okay, where is that
spk_0
balance?
spk_0
It doesn't make sense to open source other surface areas further.
spk_0
And so reserve the right to be smarter in the future, but right now kind of with 13
spk_0
and a half million using Docker desktop for free and you know, Docker engine to give you
spk_0
another stat Docker engine is downloaded 30 million times a month.
spk_0
30 million times just the just the container runtime, right?
spk_0
Several of those are me among standing up a new image or tinkering or something like that.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Build kit, which is, you know, a sub component of the stack.
spk_0
Build kit is downloaded 30 million times a month.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
So I don't know.
spk_0
It feels like we're in a good place.
spk_0
And yes, there are legit competitors who are we we have nothing but respect for.
spk_0
But given the scale that I shared with you, it feels like we're in a good place for
spk_0
a balanced standpoint.
spk_0
For sure.
spk_0
I think the my line of questioning is less again back to like, Hey, Scott just open source
spk_0
about more like it's so important and to fully own it while we, you know, in sometimes
spk_0
a business we welcome competition because competition helps us to level up and sometimes
spk_0
it kind of sucks because like they beat us and they win, right?
spk_0
And you've.
spk_0
Dockers had shares of that over its lifetime.
spk_0
We can talk about that as well.
spk_0
But I guess my thought around it is would finding a way to open source it in a way that still
spk_0
allows you to capitalize and commercialize be smarter because it disables the ability
spk_0
for competition because it's just so ubiquitous.
spk_0
That's my line.
spk_0
spk_0
That's my angle.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And it's a fair question.
spk_0
It's a fair question.
spk_0
And a lot of you said something that we we returned to really often.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
I guess you reserve the right to be smarter in the future, right?
spk_0
Every day, every minute of every day.
spk_0
That's the beauty of it.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So let's swing then, I guess to your plans for revenue, how you make money, what is the
spk_0
business model currently?
spk_0
And the reason why I'm camping there is because we spent so long for Docker to be essentially
spk_0
free.
spk_0
And now it's not necessarily free or Docker desktop or Docker hub or however you slice
spk_0
it.
spk_0
Can you explain to me since 2019 and then in 2021 when you kind of introduce pricing
spk_0
and you, you know, you enforced a lot of things new to get you to where you're at revenue
spk_0
wise as a company, can you help break that down?
spk_0
What exactly is Docker's business model today?
spk_0
Sure.
spk_0
Sure.
spk_0
And just maybe to qualify the statement, you're right.
spk_0
It's no longer free for every 100% of the time.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
It's still of the 14 and a half million registered developers, 13 some million of them
spk_0
are continuing to use it for free while 1.1 million seats of Docker desktop are paid for
spk_0
seats.
spk_0
So, it was just still well over 90% using for free.
spk_0
It was zero before, right?
spk_0
Well, it was zero before, right?
spk_0
That's right.
spk_0
So you had 100% free before and now you have 90% plus free right now.
spk_0
Sure.
spk_0
So it's still a good free base.
spk_0
So but to your point, really the way in which we had to change because before our packaging
spk_0
pricing was very much geared towards data center operations and servers.
spk_0
Sure.
spk_0
And so we said, well, yeah, man, that's not how developers and their managers pay for things.
spk_0
And so we pivoted to a seat-based model.
spk_0
And so those that aren't using the product for free, the 13 some million, the 1.1 million
spk_0
that they're paying for are paying for our per seat basis, the prices at five, nine,
spk_0
and $24 a seat a month.
spk_0
And then for those that are consuming a lot of hub content and the official images on
spk_0
hub are very, very popular because they're trusted to maintain.
spk_0
We have a good relationship with upstream to make sure that they're always clean and free
spk_0
of vulnerabilities.
spk_0
For those that are consuming a lot of those, they can buy additional capacity and kind
spk_0
of a consumption model above the kind of base five, nine, $24 price.
spk_0
And so broadly speaking, that's the businesses that organizations will buy on a per seat basis.
spk_0
And then if they want even more capacity, more consumption, they can kind of buy additional
spk_0
chunks of consumption top of that.
spk_0
Now into that, and that's kind of the core Docker desktop Docker hub base or product.
spk_0
The top of that, I'm very exciting to release new products recently that are add-ons to
spk_0
that.
spk_0
And so we released a product called Docker Scout, which allows developers to have inside
spk_0
right there and then on the laptop of what is going on inside that image.
spk_0
They can go through the layers, they can see different packages, they can see the
spk_0
different vulnerabilities that they might be susceptible to.
spk_0
And then similarly to help devs with the development of Kubernetes, destined applications
spk_0
we introduced a product that allows them to share a Kubernetes cluster with their colleagues
spk_0
without having to become Kubernetes, the ML PhDs.
spk_0
And so those are examples of, and then both those by the way have free experiences at
spk_0
them.
spk_0
So there's the way to kind of get a lot of value for free.
spk_0
But if you again want to use it at scale, and if you want additional features that plug
spk_0
into the management and security features of large organizations, then that unlocks a
spk_0
pay for motion.
spk_0
Again, bottoms up that is based on developer needs versus any sort of top-stown sales push.
spk_0
Do you feel like you have to apologize for making money on top of up-and-source as a person
spk_0
like CEO of Docker?
spk_0
I mean, do you feel like you have to apologize for that?
spk_0
I feel that if apologies, apologies is an interesting word.
spk_0
I feel that we owe it to ourselves and to the community to explain the why behind it.
spk_0
For sure.
spk_0
And that if we agree, and you said this before, which I appreciate that Docker has become
spk_0
a ubiquitous part of the modern application compute fabric, in order to continue to do so,
spk_0
and continue to innovate for developers, whether it's free or not, open source or not, we
spk_0
need to be able to pay our engineers salaries.
spk_0
We need to be able to have a sustainable company.
spk_0
And so in order to have a sustainable Docker, that means we have to have a monetization model
spk_0
that allows us to hire engineers and invest in that core technology.
spk_0
So it's less about apologies and more just, I think when something has been so ubiquitous
spk_0
and free and the perception of position has been open source, everything opens source
spk_0
all the time.
spk_0
And if we expect the community to continue to support us in this sustainable Docker journey,
spk_0
I think it's fair burden on us to kind of explain the why is behind it.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
I mean, that's like 99.9% while I wasn't having on the show because I'm like, there's
spk_0
just so much detail behind this.
spk_0
And I look at the different tealies that are out there around the sentiment of Docker
spk_0
and this 2.0, this evolved Docker.
spk_0
It seems there's some people who say bait and switch.
spk_0
I don't know if that's true, obviously.
spk_0
I don't think it's wrong to make money on open source.
spk_0
I think you should have a very clear relationship with the license and the user and all those
spk_0
different details.
spk_0
But I have the battle for this conversation I wanted to have with these guys was just
spk_0
helping to understand this open source world we live in and that everything isn't necessarily
spk_0
free for everyone as you said all the time.
spk_0
There are circumstances.
spk_0
And obviously if we want Docker to be around 10 years from now, five years from now,
spk_0
whatever the number is, given its current ubiquitous nature, we have to have a Docker business
spk_0
that makes money.
spk_0
And for a while there, you're making not as much and now you are making quite a bit.
spk_0
Can you speak to how this change has changed the company, both from a revenue standpoint
spk_0
but also as you said before, an investment standpoint.
spk_0
Being able to invest in new tooling as you mentioned, Docker Scout and other, I'm sure
spk_0
there's privacy and safety features coming out that's involved in trusted images, et
spk_0
cetera.
spk_0
Can you speak to how this has reshaped your revenue landscape but also the ability to
spk_0
invest in new product and new teams and new things?
spk_0
Yeah, I appreciate the question now.
spk_0
It is geared exactly towards this.
spk_0
How is this symbiotic, if you will, not to use a big word, but how does this coherent
spk_0
with the ecosystem?
spk_0
spk_0
And so maybe to put a point on it, we had 60 people when we did the reset the pivot and
spk_0
we're now back up over 300 and more than half of those are in R&D.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Meaning like we are taking the proceeds from this commercialization, flowing them into R&D
spk_0
that is in return developing new developer facing features and functionality that helped
spk_0
developers with additional productivity, additional security, additional portability of their
spk_0
applications.
spk_0
We talked about the Mac M1s before the ARM technology.
spk_0
We look at build kit, which is multi-platform, right?
spk_0
So the same Docker file can produce x86 ARM, even risk 5 and IBM 390 binaries.
spk_0
We've done a complete rebuild of compose to make it much faster, much more responsive
spk_0
to developers and add a good on the list, right?
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And in doing so, we think that is both growing the developer community because there's
spk_0
more and more devs coming into this market.
spk_0
Twice a million devs go into 45 million by the end of this decade.
spk_0
And what we see is, and you've referenced at the top of the call, Adam, like Docker,
spk_0
Docker can be pretty complex.
spk_0
And we see what are our responsibilities is to keep lowering the friction for new developers
spk_0
coming into the market to get the speed on board and be productive.
spk_0
And that's first and foremost to grow the community.
spk_0
And then if a subset of them come down and say, hey, I need those management features,
spk_0
those security features great.
spk_0
But person for us to start with going to community.
spk_0
So as a specific near, was a specific recent example of this in the last couple of releases,
spk_0
we've gone something called Docker init, which very deliberately patterns off of other,
spk_0
you know, XYZ and nits out there in the developer world, where you point it at a directory,
spk_0
say your Python developer, you point at your directory, do Docker init in that directory.
spk_0
And we automatically generate the dot Docker ignore, automatically generate the Docker file,
spk_0
automatically generate the Docker compose file.
spk_0
And those because we've heard from the community, from we've heard the community that like,
spk_0
hey, you know, I'm getting my head around Docker file or hey, getting my head around Docker
spk_0
post, that's off.
spk_0
That's a high bar for me to get on board it.
spk_0
So we're like, okay, let's provide some automation tools.
spk_0
And what I just share with you, Adam, is 100% kind of free.
spk_0
Right?
spk_0
It's just like, hey, just help, help get up to speed.
spk_0
So as an example, how the commercialization as well as to invest in developer facing value
spk_0
that that is first and foremost about growing that developer community, helping them on board,
spk_0
helping simplify their experience.
spk_0
That is first and foremost, how our business works.
spk_0
And then again, if they go and work for an organization, that organization needs security,
spk_0
manage belief and observability, then there's a pay for a set of features for them as
spk_0
well.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Can we talk about the recent, I don't want to call it a blunder.
spk_0
I guess, change of direction, the reversal of the free team plan.
spk_0
What happened there?
spk_0
What exactly was it communicated wrong?
spk_0
Was it a wrong decision?
spk_0
What was that?
spk_0
I think it was a decision that was well intended, but wasn't fully informed.
spk_0
And that's on us.
spk_0
I'm not saying that someone else was responsible for and far as.
spk_0
And what I mean specifically though is that there is actually a fantastic product for open
spk_0
source projects on Docker, being distributed through Docker Hub.
spk_0
And it's called a Docker-sponsored open source program.
spk_0
And it's a really strong product, meaning it's got no rate limitations for any of the
spk_0
users pulling images from their accounts.
spk_0
It has preferred results that pop up in the search as users as developers are doing searches
spk_0
for content.
spk_0
So if you're a Docker-sponsored open source, you appear higher in the results.
spk_0
It's got a badge associated with it.
spk_0
So users that are crawling over Hub can see that, oh, that's legit.
spk_0
And it also gives those users, those publishers, rather, publishing stats and analytics so
spk_0
they can see who's using it and how it's being downloaded, what's pop of their tags and
spk_0
such.
spk_0
So it's actually a much better experience than just kind of the free team product that
spk_0
was out there.
spk_0
And the intention was to guide those users, which was about less than 1.8% of the overall
spk_0
base, but it was as we found out, very vocal percent.
spk_0
Our tech was to guide those users to this better product.
spk_0
We didn't fully appreciate how difficult that was for them from a tooling standpoint.
spk_0
We didn't fully appreciate the breadth and depth of the service area in the open source
spk_0
project community.
spk_0
And as a result, we're like, after one of those was a week or two, we're just like, ah,
spk_0
we made a wrong call here.
spk_0
We didn't have full understanding of this community as we should have.
spk_0
And hence, hence, we reverse that decision.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Well, sometimes things like that happen.
spk_0
You lose the goodwill folks.
spk_0
And as you can see, they're very vocal.
spk_0
Those folks involved in that change.
spk_0
When you kind of mess with, in quotes, open source teams, it's like, well, that's
spk_0
ruffle some feathers there.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And then obviously you kind of open up the consideration opportunity for alternatives,
spk_0
which I want to speak to, I suppose, Docker Hub.
spk_0
And then as it relates to say GitHub container registry, which were users of in that change,
spk_0
we didn't.
spk_0
It wasn't an emotional switch, but we switched from Docker Hub and that to, it was actually
spk_0
really easy.
spk_0
It was just a string, essentially.
spk_0
So the change was rather simple for us in particular, but we moved from Docker Hub to
spk_0
GitHub container registry in that process.
spk_0
And it wasn't because of that.
spk_0
I can ask Gerhard who is our SRE on our team.
spk_0
Why we made that change?
spk_0
It wasn't emotional.
spk_0
It wasn't because of, ah, Docker, you're terrible people.
spk_0
Come on, open source.
spk_0
Nothing like that whatsoever.
spk_0
But the point I'm trying to get to is that when those kind of things happen and you have
spk_0
those misunderstandings or lack of clarity for that kind of population for you all, change
spk_0
can happen.
spk_0
Can you speak to like that?
spk_0
I suppose that lack of good will that happened or that that loss of good will potentially
spk_0
and then how that opened up the opportunity to move to something else.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
We clear we're aware of that potential.
spk_0
And again, the intention whether they say the road to hell is pay with good intentions.
spk_0
It was it's true.
spk_0
It is.
spk_0
Despite the intention being pure, we realized we realized that was a risk.
spk_0
And of course, when we saw the community reaction, we let the reversal.
spk_0
But I think what we've also tried to make clear is that we continue to invest extremely
spk_0
heavily in open source.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
And it costs tens of millions of dollars to operate Docker Hub annually.
spk_0
And as we've talked about earlier, the vast majority of users, the 20 some million used
spk_0
Docker of absolutely for free.
spk_0
And that's okay.
spk_0
It's more than okay.
spk_0
Like that is our contribution to this community.
spk_0
30 million monthly downloads of Docker engine 25, 30 million downloads of build kit Docker
spk_0
build.
spk_0
And and and then this Docker sponsored open source program, which again gives away networking,
spk_0
storage, preferred search results, analytics all for free.
spk_0
And so despite the misstep or the thing you said Blunder, which is appropriate as well,
spk_0
it hasn't changed our commitment to open source and it hasn't changed our commitment to
spk_0
that community.
spk_0
And our ask perhaps or our wishes that the community would acknowledge that we are continued
spk_0
to contribute to it and maybe give us some grace in not being a perfect an organization
spk_0
that's not perfect being filled within perfect humans that everyone's in while despite
spk_0
best intentions, we can misstep for sure.
spk_0
And I'm that's, you know, again, 99.9% why I want to have on the show is because there's
spk_0
just so much humanity behind businesses.
spk_0
We often just look at this spec and the, you know, the line items in the, in the free plan
spk_0
versus this plan of that plan.
spk_0
And we, we screwed out of those things.
spk_0
We forget about the humanity and all the details involved.
spk_0
And I totally believe that you had the best of intentions.
spk_0
And sometimes the community doesn't correctly.
spk_0
At the same time though, we also have competition.
spk_0
And you know, I want to understand, I suppose the state of Docker hub, I know you got a lot
spk_0
of, you mentioned the open source program.
spk_0
I'd love to examine that to some degree if we have time for it.
spk_0
We're probably 15 minutes out from the end of the show.
spk_0
So we have limited time and lots more to talk about.
spk_0
But GitHub has pros and cons with their container registry, right?
spk_0
It's integrated into GitHub, but it's, it's gone.
spk_0
I suppose would be that you have to use GitHub.
spk_0
So if you use GitLab or something else that's an alternative to GitHub, well, you have
spk_0
that registry.
spk_0
But this, you know, opened up that opportunity.
spk_0
How do you compete with GitHub at that level with the registry?
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How do you see alternatives to the Docker hub dominance?
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Sure.
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Sure.
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And look, it's important that our North Star be serving our users.
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And while it's always healthy, you reference this early.
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It's healthy to respect and pay attention to the competition.
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It makes it, it does make you better.
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Organizations, I've seen and been part of organizations that got that priority flipped
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around.
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Like they obsessed about competition and users came second.
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And that can lead you down to unhealthy paths, which we can, we can talk about some examples
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if that's interesting in the show.
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But focusing on why Docker hub provides value, there's a couple of things that are worth
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calling attention to.
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One is, as I mentioned, like, you know, the free egress, right?
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Free, free egress, free superior search results for publishers, free badges, free analytics
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for publishers, all by being part of this community.
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And I think the community part is a really second part to worth underscoring, which is there's
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15 some million different repos on Docker hub.
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And so by being part of the Docker sponsor open source, you rise above that.
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And as being part of hub, you're now part of a community that includes 20 million monthly
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active that are actively searching through Docker hub, looking for fantastic applications,
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fantastic content.
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And so we think those are pretty exciting for an open source project and you see many
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of them launch on Docker hub and then social media that we pointing back to their their
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repos their applications on Docker hub.
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And part of that community is the feedback mechanism and the conversation, right?
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And so I'm sure GitHub and other container registries have fantastic communities as well.
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I'll just say ours is at a scale and at a call it a critical mass that offers a lot
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of benefits to those who are launching new businesses, launching new projects there.
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Last thing I'll add is that if you're part of our curated community members, Docker
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sponsored open source, Docker verified publishers or Docker official images is that the ease
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of use from the Docker client because of our ownership of the library namespace on hub,
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you can type Docker, pull, you're on to type library for slash you do Docker pull mango,
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it just makes it easy to try new technologies.
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And a lot of in talking about their community, a lot of the value they get from Docker Hub
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is being able to come and very easily and containerization general helps with this.
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But they're able to come to Docker Hub discover and try new technologies just very, very easy.
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And that that discoverability ease of try is a big part of the value of the Docker experience
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in Docker hub in particular.
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Yeah, I know that this year's part of your security and safety focus here in 2023.
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How does that ticker into Docker Hub in terms of like, I think there's terminology like,
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has it verified images? I'm not sure you probably know this of course because you're CEO,
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but kind of give me some of that safety mechanism and security mechanism into hub.
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Thank you. I'll see the curated or the trusted open source content is someone
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that was popular there and it's popular because developers have learned to trust it.
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And so the Docker official images as one of the three categories, none of the images
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through that program are less than 30 days old, meaning we have a very tight relationship
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with upstream. And that means from the latest functionality, latest vulnerability patches,
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latest, you got a CVE that breaks out. We work incredibly tightly or in tandem with that
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community to make sure that those those images are updated and fresh and ready to go.
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In fact, when the log for J, J had log for shell hit, what 15 months or so ago, now 16 months
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literally within hours we were working with upstream to have those images that content
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refreshed and available, vulnerability free. And some organizations that are lying on other images
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for their base images, you know, still a year later, they're still vulnerable to log for J,
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log for shell. And all that happens on our side with publishers, developers don't have to do a
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thing, so just do a latest update, right? Pull pull a latest image and they get that security
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benefit of a clean updated patched image 100% for free. And so maybe just put a point on it from
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a stats standpoint, these three programs, Docker official images, Docker-rified publisher, and then
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Docker sponsored open source, which we've talked about quite a bit already. They represent about
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about 2500 some different repos on hub out of 15 million, but because they are curated,
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maintained and trusted open source content from these three programs, those three represent over
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50% of the 16 billion polls a month from hub. Right? So, you know, a very small subset,
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you know, a couple percentage points represent the vast majority of consumption because they are
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trusted maintained curated clean. And that's important too, Riley, when you pull,
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do Docker pull, you want to pull an image that you know is safe and secure and has that vetting
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around it. That's right. You know, that kind of thing. That's that's a tremendous. And it's
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takes a lot of work I'm sure. As you mentioned, 10 million dollars or more a year to to run hub and
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just hubs infrastructure. And then we have a whole set of fantastic engineers and product teams
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who are working with our publishers and work out an automation to make sure that the images
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stay trusted that they stay clean, they stay they stay pure. It seems though last year 2022 was
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the year of acquisitions for you all can you speak to some of the moves you made even this
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in this economic downturns of the speak as we're going at the do you go into those acquisitions with
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exuberance or trepidation in retrospect to now like is there any concern? Speak to I guess the
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acquisition made and why you made those choices. Sure, sure. It actually pulls from a theme that
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we've touched on earlier here. And which is as we started to commercialize, we wanted to ship
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even more value faster to developers and we have a fantastic internal R&D team, but we knew we could
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do more. And so last year we acquired five companies about this time last year actually. And that
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was all in the service of accelerating our roadmap. So I wrote that for developers. And so a couple
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of examples. The Adamist team became the foundation of what is now Docker Scout. And so the
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system of record that's based on graph technology under the covers that tracks every package,
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every gig commit, every CI result every test. It builds a graph of that image lifecycle from end
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to end. So log for J. We come just a query just to look up into that into that graph and help
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steps get a really insight in terms of what the stake of their image is and where they need to take
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action to remediate. We acquire a two person company called Neste box and they form the basis of
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the the additional VDI stack that we talked about earlier the VDI compatibility of Docker desktop
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as well as something we launched in the October timeframe called hardened Docker desktop which
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provides a layer of security that prevents rogue malicious containers from breaking out into the
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host and breaking out further into the broader network of organizations. Third is we acquired a
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company called InfoSifter, which had some fantastic relationships with upstream and fantastic
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automation around the making the official images even safer and even more resilient. I'll say to
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attacks. Fourth company called Tilt had just fantastic developers that had a really good
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sensibility around making Kubernetes easier for developers and lowering the barriers so you didn't
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have to become a PhD in Kubernetes YAML and so brought them aboard about five of five engineers
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in that team. They're working closely with our Docker Compose team to bring that ease of
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Kubernetes development to all developers. And then the fifth one was a company called Cloudily
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that had some fantastic engineers who had built internal development platforms that twice in
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previous employers and were in the process of creating a company around IDPs and we realized in the
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coming world of platforms that that skill set that kind of developer sensibility would be really
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valuable for us and so we acquired them as well. So there's just some examples that they were all
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hopefully you're hearing kind of forward looking examples. Yeah. Forward looking examples to serve
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the developer experience and able to deliver value to developer spasher than we could on our own
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organically was our own R&D team. Fantastic. Yeah. This is music to my ears Scott because it just
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makes it more concrete what you said before which was we grew. I'm paraphrasing because this is how
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I heard you at least we grew so we can reinvest into the developer experience of Docker at large
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where the tub whether it's Docker desktop whether it's security safety, etc. You know trusted images
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the open source. It's called for Docker Hub with the open source. So it's Docker official images,
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Docker verified publish images and Docker sponsored open source. Those are three trusted content
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programs. That's a Docker sponsor open source that was done by. Yeah. I mean that's you know that's
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part of the exactly what I want to talk to you because I feel like people expect Docker for free
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it all layers for all the time and that you know you've kind of been negatively impacted you know
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from a brain standpoint because you've made money on open source and you want to reinvest.
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Now I'm sure there's a lot of details and nuance in there that I might be missing you might
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be missing this not you know here in this conversation necessarily but you know as you said
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intentions you have good intentions for Docker the platform the technology and those involved
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in we we do make my steps along the way but hey we have to adhere to what was your what was your
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one pillar for not humility not the first one the last one where you look at and you see your
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sorry you look at when you're wrong what was that one bias for considered action bias for considered
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action exactly I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow that if you don't mile like that. No please
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please but also I acknowledge I'll say empathy for a community that was used to something for free
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for so long for sure and with the pivot of the company that required us to stand back and look
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at the end told that everything kind of all up in a fresh lens and I can imagine a very different
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scenario versus you know if had we started back in 2013 2014 with this focus on developers and
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this focus on the model then it would have just like these expectations would have been set on a
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much smaller surface area and just growing with the company over the nine years but that's not what
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happened right the company grew and then did a hard pivot in 2019 and then that hard change in how
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we looked at things and at that scale millions tens of millions of users using it I can I can have
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empathy for like hey this is a change and generally speaking humans as a as a species we don't like
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now there's the book whom my cheese for a reason Scott you know I encourage everyone to read it
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again and again and again I read it every couple years if not yearly just because there's so much
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change right this is a reminder to to be resilient when possible for sure okay so last question
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if you can answer it in three minutes or less so the the clock is ticking of course talk to me
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about artificial intelligence in Docker like it seems to be potentially interesting in Docker
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desktop I've used recently chat GPT to sort of learn how to build Docker files that you mentioned
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before you had devs with Docker and it needing more help but there's like I can just describe hey I
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want to build a Docker file in a doc compose file to handle x y and z and that might be Ruby 2.7
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on arm with particulars and out the other end I have a Docker file that basically I just do
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Docker up or Docker build or whatever it might be or Docker compose up dash d and there it goes
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it's running so help me understand the what might be happening can you can you disclose anything
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I can I can and if you're okay I'm gonna go a little bit beyond our time with that space so
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there's there's four there's four areas Adam one is we're very privileged I'll say in that if
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you look around the ecosystem today so many of the emerging aiml startups and technologies are
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using Docker based on Docker and not just based on Docker but they expose their interfaces to
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their community using Docker so if you look at hugging face as an example hugging face when you
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contribute a model to hugging face you contribute in a Docker container image replicate same sort
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of thing when you contribute a model to replicate and have them kind of do their magic run the model
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in the cloud you contribute in a Docker container you open AI we could just go down the list like they're
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all kind of using Docker internally but also externally with their communities so that's kind of one
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second is going back to earlier thread in the program so much of our content from Docker Hub our
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trusted open source content is aiml tools so tensorflow high torch deep I forget the deep the there's
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a whole series of deep things from Google like all of those are being distributed from hub and so
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gives the aiml developer community access to tools for free out of the box they can just kind of
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roll up and start using and the asterisk or the punchline or the kicker to this is better said
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that I'm Docker desktop if it's on top of a laptop that has a GPU Docker desktop will allow the
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developer to take advantage of that GPU to accelerate the model learning locally on the laptop
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right so this is kind of we're providing tools or picks and shovels to the prospectors in terms
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of open source content as well as GPU acceleration locally the third is that Docker itself completely
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anonymously aggregates about 23,000 developer events every second so we see kind of command line we
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see what images are being used together all anonymously and so we have a very good insight in
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terms of what stumbling blocks develops are hitting what container images they're using with
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other container images which helps us in this in this quest of helping them be more productive
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did you know your friends were using this Python stack also are using this version right
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and then the fourth to get finally to your specific example question yes chat gbt is a fun
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out fantastic tool for building Docker files and Docker compose files for sure and so there's
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you'll watch this space for ways in which we can help devs more faster on board and be productive
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with Docker with these fantastic fantastic yeah ml assets yeah I mean I'm a Docker file maker now
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whereas before I was not I guess my pair programmer my AI pair program help me do it because
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I was like you know what I'm I need to do this and it was actually my jekyll blocks I was like I don't
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want to rerun and learn how to like you know install Ruby on my Mac I want to keep a pristine I can do
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this in Docker like why am I not doing this in Docker well okay with the reason why I'm not
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is because I don't know how to use Docker files to build an image that does this environment
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with sure I know about dev containers and I know about you know all these other things but
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I'm like wow do I get there let me go talk to my pair programmer chat gbt and I described hey
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I've got a juggle blog with this version I need Ruby this and the that give me a Docker file that
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helps me do this in like with one or two small iterations I've got you know that set up whereas
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before it was intimidating it was a blocker for me and this is an unlocker really like Docker is so
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easy to use it's such a magical magical technology so congratulations to where you're at
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personally SEO and then the company because it is utter magic so please don't stop don't
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wait you're doing because when you more of it in better ways and we need to sustain and all
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the good things I'm like wow I use chat gbt and next thing I've got this Docker file I was already
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used to Docker compose and that hasn't been hard for me necessarily but Docker files and building
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images was sort of a black box for me it's kind of hard to get if you don't know all the details
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they can they can be tough right and then you go further down the rabbit holes like you know
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having them mount the container and then building a container for test versus building container
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for production like the Docker files get complex really quickly yeah but um we're we're finding
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that that chat gbt and Docker knit together can really really bring that power to many many more
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developers very cool I only had a few more things on my list but they're not worth taking your time
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beyond what we ask for so I don't mind that but is there anything left I didn't ask you that we
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can cover here in closing I just want to say thank you Adam for time to come on the show and have
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the conversation um do you want to underscore that that we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the
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developer community and and we knew three and a half years ago that we did the pivot that we had
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to focus first and foremost on them and just know hopefully you can hear from our from our virtues
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developer obsession is one of the four and doesn't mean we always get it right but it does
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mean that it is our north star and we would ask community to to continue to give us feedback continue
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to have a conversation with us on where we can go to best serve them so that's what I that's what I
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then with yeah well said Scott well thank you so much for your time thank you for all you've
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done for Docker the company I love your leadership so much more we're gonna cover it but uh
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we'll leave it there for now but thank you so much for your time I appreciate it thank you Adam
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well I have Docker desktop on my Mac on my other Mac on my Linux box my own lab stuff so Docker
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is everywhere for me and so I feel like Scott is on the right track in his leadership and obviously
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on the right track for revenue for Docker to be a sustainable and long lasting company which
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paramount to our tooling I'm a fan of Scott I hope you are too I loved this conversation with him and
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I'm so thankful to get this chance to sit down with him and ask him some of these hard questions
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let me know what you think in the comments the link is in the show notes once again big thanks to
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our friends at fastly fly and of course type sense and those beats are banging thanks to
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brake mass cylinder BMC loving those beats but that's it this show is done thank you again we'll
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see you on the next one
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ok