Sad that the issue was closed with a 3 paragraph long diatribe laced with venom. For someone that talked a lot about taking the high road from a PR perspective, Solomon has certainly not missed an opportunity to get really worked up in various forums over this.
The reply seemed strong but on-point and reasonable. Why should Docker break compatibility and abandon what appears to be a pretty serious amount of consensus from a large number of pretty serious industry players, in order to comply with a startup's 3-day-old unfinished "standard" for their "we're building the next Docker, but incompatible with Docker, give us money now please" business plan?
Especially when the request was not worded as "we're trying to standardize this, want to help out", but "we ARE the standard, comply with us".
CoreOS comes off in this exchange looking the very worst sort of VC vaporware wannabes, and that's what I'm going to remember a year or two down the line (assuming they even still exist at that point) if faced with an actual choice involving them.
You realize the issue wasn't opened by someone at CoreOS, or the discussion before Solomon's diatribe wasn't forceful or in bad faith? @jfrazelle actually had the diplomatic answer right there, not this "defending my turf attitude". The attitude seems to be "you must use the Docker container spec or gtfo". That's not the attitude of a friendly OSS maintainer but more so of a private interest viciously protecting themselves.
I had no negative opinion about either company but to me it's clear Solomon has come off very poorly and undiplomatic from this whole exchange. CoreOS has done nothing wrong, they are not obligated to do whatever Docker Inc. or Solomon wants them to do. And of course neither does Docker have to do whatever CoreOS maintainers might want of them, but one side is mudslinging and bickering while the other isn't, very childish IMHO.
I'm sorry but this is exactly the kind of leadership Docker needs right now. He reminds me a bit of Linus Torvalds and Theo de Raadt in his responses. Doesn't take shit from anyone, doesn't try to please everyone and gets shit done. Exactly what Docker as a project is doing.
Has Linus ever gotten bent out of shape at somebody for forking Linux (assuming they've done it while not violating the license)? Let alone someone who would decide to do their own clean implementation of a Linux like OS? I don't think that comparison makes much sense.
EDIT: Let the users work this out, if Rocket fulfills a need for some people better than Docker does for CoreOS then it will become clear overtime. Docker does need leadership, but not by picking pointless fights.
> Especially when the request was not worded as "we're trying to standardize this, want to help out", but "we ARE the standard, comply with us".
Maybe I missed it, but I never got the impression that CoreOS was as bullish as you say. If Docker wasn't moving in the direction of container standardization, then someone needed to step up and do it, and I'm glad CoreOS is doing so.
The final container standard 1.0 might not be based on CoreOS's proposal at all, and hopefully it's more compatible with today's de facto Docker containers, but the important thing is that standardization is part of the conversation now.
I don't see the venom. I see someone who is taking a lot of flak from internet experts and probably too eager to satisfy them, when such a thing is impossible.
What is Solomon supposed to do? He explained very clearly his thoughts about standards. It's actually a very reasonable (if a bit defensive) response.
I mean, the issue just says "support this standard" and it's an explosion of...I guess what is deemed as non-venom? He could have just closed it and said "Not at this time" or something like that.
Docker should adhere to the App Container Image (ACI) specification.
That's a more forceful wording than "support this standard".
I might not have used the same tone as Solomon here but the issue is not exactly worded diplomatically either, particularly given the current tone right now around these two projects.
> Sad that the issue was closed with a 3 paragraph long diatribe laced with venom
It's a snarky bug report. It's like asking the Linux kernel to adhere to Microsoft' standards. Except in this case it would be a start-up with vaporware. I hope CoreOS makes rocket into something awesome, but it pretty arrogant to assume the huge project would start following a standard of a 3 day old project.
His tone sounds quite defensive with all this "CoreOS and container runtime" ordeal. That being said, it doesn't make him any less right. Heck, I don't know all of those forum posts you are talking about, but on this specific incident I can confidently say if I was him I would pretty much give the same kind of response.
Why is he right? Docker is good software but it's not that good. The implementation is all over the place and there are several implementations of the docker image registry for absolutely no good reason. Implementation defined standards are not a good thing and as it stands docker is an implementation defined standard. The larger community wins if there is an open and documented standard and that's exactly what the CoreOS guys are doing. Vendors of container related software should be competing on features and not trying to reverse engineer each others' implementations.
