Containers & Infrastructure

Docker

Docker is stewarded commercially by Docker, Inc. (CEO Don Johnson since Feb 2025, President/COO Mark Cavage since March 2025), while the core engine ships as the Moby Project under Apache License 2.0 on GitHub. Docker Engine is at 29.6.2 (released 2026-07-16); Docker Desktop is at 4.82.0 (2026-07-13). Under the hood, the engine delegates actual container execution to containerd (a CNCF graduated project) and runc — Docker's value-add is the daemon, CLI, and BuildKit-powered build pipeline, not the runtime primitives themselves. Desktop is free only for individuals, education, non-commercial open source, and firms under 250 employees/$10M revenue; everyone else pays per-seat (Pro $9-11/mo, Team $15-16/user/mo, Business $24/user/mo). Docker, Inc. is estimated by third-party research firm Sacra to have reached roughly $207M ARR in 2024 on the back of 1M+ paid subscriber seats — Docker is privately held and doesn't disclose financials itself, but the estimate is consistent with a free CLI funding a real commercial layer, not just a hobby project. Current version/status: Docker Engine 29.6.2 (2026-07-16); Docker Desktop 4.82.0 (2026-07-13). License: Docker Engine / Moby Project: Apache License 2.0 (open source). Docker Desktop: proprietary, free only under Docker's Personal-use eligibility terms (individuals, education, non-commercial OSS, or businesses under 250 employees and $10M

Also known as: containers, containerization
🧊Why learn Docker?

Pick Docker when you need a single, boring-reliable way to package an app and its dependencies so it runs identically on a laptop, CI runner, and prod host — it's the default for a reason, and `docker compose up` still beats hand-rolled VM provisioning for local dev. Don't pick it as your production orchestrator at real scale: that's Kubernetes' job, and Docker's own stack (containerd/runc) is what Kubernetes runs on underneath anyway. Don't pick Docker Desktop for a 300-person company without budgeting for the per-seat license — the free-tier cutoff (250 employees/$10M revenue) catches teams off guard. Honest weakness the community won't stop complaining about: image bloat and slow multi-stage builds on large monorepos, which is exactly why BuildKit and Docker Build Cloud exist as bolt-on fixes rather than solved problems. Known weakness: Image size/build-time bloat on large projects is a widely acknowledged pain point — Docker's own response was to build BuildKit and a paid Docker Build Cloud tier rather than solve it in the free core.

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Compare Docker

Docker vs Podman→Docker vs Kubernetes→Docker vs Containerd→Docker vs Lxc→

Learning Resources

📄
Docker Docs — Get Started
docs
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📝
Docker Guides
tutorial
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Docker 101 Tutorial
tutorial
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📄
Docker Desktop Release Notes
docs
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Related Tools

Docker ComposeKubernetesContainerdCi CdLinux

Alternatives to Docker

PodmanKubernetesContainerdLxc

Other Containers & Infrastructure

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