> They certainly seemed to be surprised when it was announced.
Yes they were, but they really should not have been. Docker had started with a rough draft of an open specification, but then removed it. Every time the idea was brought up, it was shot down. Docker viewed it as a strategic move to not have an open spec that anyone could implement and use container images with.
However, with such a critical piece of technology, it was unreasonable to expect no one else to want it to have a common standard format which could be interchangeable with other container runtime implementations.
So I suspect the "surprise" was more "anger" than anything.
> As far as I can tell, the Docker folks weren't consulted when CoreOS was developing Rocket and App Container.
Right, they were not consulted prior to it's public release. However ACI was an open standard and actively requested contributions to help shape it. ACI was very early when it was released and needed implementations to help shake out the bugs. At that point, Docker actively refused to participate, and instead a week later cooked up their own "open" implementation which was nothing more than rough documentation of how Docker behaves internally (not something a person could write an implementation against).
Initially Docker staffers seemed excited to contribute, but it got shot down quickly by shykes.
So, it's not surprising that, fast forwarding to today, concessions had to be made in order for Docker to save face and not appear to cave into public demand for a standardized open format that no single for-profit organization controlled entirely. Now both parties get good PR for working together and settling their differences, and the community gets a truly open standard from which, I expect, a great many implementations will arise.
Yes they were, but they really should not have been. Docker had started with a rough draft of an open specification, but then removed it. Every time the idea was brought up, it was shot down. Docker viewed it as a strategic move to not have an open spec that anyone could implement and use container images with.
However, with such a critical piece of technology, it was unreasonable to expect no one else to want it to have a common standard format which could be interchangeable with other container runtime implementations.
So I suspect the "surprise" was more "anger" than anything.
> As far as I can tell, the Docker folks weren't consulted when CoreOS was developing Rocket and App Container.
Right, they were not consulted prior to it's public release. However ACI was an open standard and actively requested contributions to help shape it. ACI was very early when it was released and needed implementations to help shake out the bugs. At that point, Docker actively refused to participate, and instead a week later cooked up their own "open" implementation which was nothing more than rough documentation of how Docker behaves internally (not something a person could write an implementation against).
Initially Docker staffers seemed excited to contribute, but it got shot down quickly by shykes.
See these github issues:
https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/9538
https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/10643
And there was shykes' rampage when CoreOS made the initial announcement, which began with this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683705
So, it's not surprising that, fast forwarding to today, concessions had to be made in order for Docker to save face and not appear to cave into public demand for a standardized open format that no single for-profit organization controlled entirely. Now both parties get good PR for working together and settling their differences, and the community gets a truly open standard from which, I expect, a great many implementations will arise.