Docker's value here is in wrapping that up into a nice useable package and offering a centralized repository. How much value does that actually add and more importantly, how do they monetize that?
A lot of this kind of tech work winds up this way.
In my opinion a hell of a lot.
I was using LXCs before Docker and the experience wasn't too bad as long as you were running native Linux. That's not going to be possible for a lot of folks which means it's back to rolling your own manual VM, then figuring out how to do remote code editing not just to a VM but an LXC within a VM and then figuring out distribution of that along with a lot of other problems that Docker solves.
With Docker, it really is just install it and run 1-2 commands and a lot of major code editors know how to work with it too.
Docker just seemed unable to produce products that enterprises would open their pocket books for. Their new pricing model around dockerhub/desktop may work
They grew too fast before they know how to commercialize it, if they had a payment model from the beginning this wouldn't have happened imo
Moreover, it has been amazing to watch how long it has taken the Docker community to move to distroless and more lightweight images.
This new valuation is a down round right?
Everyone knows there is little value in a container runtime. The value is in orchestration (k8s). There are so many other runtimes these days.