Docker Begins Straddling Free and Paid Services

Here at OStatic, we're big fans of Docker, and we've been following recent developments surrounding it, including Red Hat starting to offer certification for Docker apps. As Docker matures, it is taking a page from the world of open source projects that have given birth to commercial arms of those projects, and making some features available only to paid customers. A blog post introduces Private Repositories on Docker.io and a fee structure for them.

If you use the free tier for repositories you'll experience no change, but the Docker blog post notes the following about Private Repositories:

"One of the most-requested features is private repos.  Say you’re working on a project that you want to share with the world but is not yet ready for prime time.  Now you can push your work-in-progress to a private repo on docker.io and invite only specific collaborators to pull from and push to it.  When you’re ready, you can make your private repo public, and it’ll automatically be indexed and publicly searchable."

"All services on Docker.io to this point have been freely available, and we feel this is important in fostering an active, growing community around Docker.  For this reason, most of Docker.io’s services will continue to be free but, as Ben has already publicly shared, to support continued investment in Docker we will over time offer optional pay-for services. Private repos is the first example of this."

While some members of the free libre community may balk at this, in all likelihood, revenues will help Docker mature in a healthy way and offer more to users of the free tier.

Anybody can continue to create an unlimited number of public repositories on Docker.io. If you want Private Repositories, pricing is set at $7 per month for five of them, and $50 per month for up to 50 private repos.

According to the original Docker post about new services, there are many new offerings coming, including public cloud services. Docker appears to be following the GitHub model as it pursues both free and paid services. There are also related announcements coming up.