That's exciting. I looked at Docker briefly, and it has the "Ooh, cool project, can envision the potential" bit in spades but unfortunately is at that unhappy stage of maturity where e.g. betting AR's future on it not blowing up or shutting down would be a bit more risky than the benefits currently warrant. I'm really looking forward to when it's production-ready.
In addition to the funding, we have bet on a Linux-style development model where the project is not just open source but open design: ownership is federated across key individuals with strong ownership over particular subsystems, with very low barriers to entry and a diversity of employers.
This is one of the reasons Red Hat felt comfortable betting on it so quickly - and you should expect other major industry players to folluw suit this year :)
That's awesome, and I can respect that you're trying to tell me "We are trying to make Docker the project survivable even in the event of Docker, Inc ceasing to operate as a going concern.", and I have much less stringent requirements for maturity than the Fortune 500, but...
As one geek to another, the thing which stops me from Dockering up my entire infrastructure in February is that: of that NxN compatibility matrix that Docker will some day liberate me from, I feel like I'm going to be the first production system in a lot of the cells, I will have to replace my existing cobbled-together infrastructure which I know to be borderline functional with hand-rolled work to Dockerize it, and I figure that when there are inevitably bugs I will be the one to weep tears of blood about them.
Coming from the ex-CEO of a 24/7 managed hosted service... I absolutely hear you!
So, we'll simply work our buts off to make the risk/reward more and more appealing for you... And in the meantime we would love to go over your particular stack and tell you how far off we are. Apparently we can afford a team of solutions engineers to do that now :)
If you're interested feel free to ping me at solomon@docker.com. I would be honored to explore your cobbled-together infrastructure!
I know the feel about taking some unnecessary risk, but still you will certainly not be the first to try to clean the floor:
A lot of people are actively using Docker right now. For instance I'm building https://reesd.com on it (i.e. I don't have a prior system that I replace). Getting a few bugs from Docker is not different to me than getting a few bugs from my own systems. I write my integration tests and move along.
Other people are further along the road building a lot of different things, trying a lot of different ideas. I would think that unless you're doing something radically different, a lot of ground has already been covered (and will be covered until you have completely switched to Docker).
Another reason I was not afraid of Docker is that it is built around existing pieces. For instance some people say "Docker is just a script around the lxc tools, what's the point". That, in my opinion, is reassuring. If I need to, I will be able to drop to the next layer, or another similar project will take over.
I'm in the same boat: I think this has huge potential but with my skill set it would not be wise for my company to be a trailblazer on ops.
@shykes: What would convince me is one or two blog posts from respected members of the community (patio11 comes to mind :-) where they detail a successful transition to use Docker in their infrastructure.
This is something we're working on. Right now Docker is successful in projects and companies who want to be on the ground floor of revolutionary product and have the capacity to invest in / contribute time to dealing with maturing technology.
Not all companies have the benefit of being in such a position, and we're working hard to make Docker adoption a possibility there by offering Services (through partners) and Support (through us) around it.
We will not be the ones to make the judgement of when we've hit that level of maturity, but we will be publishing use cases / white papers / details about people who believe we have.
What I would encourage you to do is to start thinking about it and take advantage of the fact that we have a vested interest in making your project successful. Get in touch, tell us about your needs, and help make Docker better by making sure your use case is on track for being rock solid.
