I suppose it would be nice if podman.socket was enabled by default. Socket activation means that it wouldn't actaully launch podman-system-service unless something connected to it.

For me the problem with podman-compose is that it will be continuously chasing the moving target of what docker-compose is able to do. Hence there will forever be developers trying it out, finding out that "it doesn't work" and, in wanting to just get on with their jobs, going back to docker-compose... and in the process filing "podman" away in that little box in the back of their head of stuff that doesn't work.

Implementing the docker API seems to have worked out much better, I suppose it too is a moving target but it seems to move slower; I can at least download some demo docker-compose.yaml files and process them with docker-compose talking to podman and they worked out of the box!