What is your theory for why Docker won and Vagrant didn't?
Mine is that all of the previous options were too Turing Complete, while the Dockerfile format more closely follows the Principle of Least Power.
Power users always complain about how their awesome tool gets ignored while 'lesser' tools become popular. And then they put so much energy into apologizing for problems with the tool or deflecting by denigrating the people who complain. Maybe the problem isn't with 'everyone'. Maybe Power Users have control issues, and pandering to them is not a successful strategy.
What turned me off from Vagrant was that Vagrant machines were never fully reproducible.
Docker took the approach of specifying images in terms of how to create them from scratch. Vagrant, on the other hand, took the approach of specifying certain details about a machine, then trying to apply changes to an existing machine to get it into the desired state. Since the Vagrantfile didn't (and couldn't) specify everything about that state, you'd inevitably end up with some drift as you applied changes to a machine over time -- a development team using Vagrant could often end up in situations where code behaved differently on two developers' machines because their respective Vagrant machines had gotten into different states.
It helped that Docker images can be used in production. Vagrant was only ever pitched as a solution for development; you'd be crazy to try to use it in production.
Docker is not fully reproducible either. Try building a Docker image from two different machines and then pushing it to a registry. It will always overwrite.
Ooooh, “it will always overwrite.”: this is like saying an indirect way of saying that your executable will behave exactly the same if it got overwritten (by a same set of bytes).
I’ve read bug threads in the moby GitHub where they reject a feature because it’s not repeatable, while people point out that Docker files start with apt-get so they aren’t repeatable from layer 2 anyway. The team members don’t seem to hear them and it’s frustrating to watch.
Images are repeatable. We like repeatable images. That’s enough for most of us. Don’t break that and we’re good. Just fix build time bullshit please.
Second for raindrop! Having a dedicated app outside of any browser was initially what pulled me over. Simple UI that does just enough, without trying to tack on endless features that I would never use (like many alternatives do). The webpage archive feature itself has also saved me a handful of times.
I have used GoDaddy in the past and thankfully did not have these kinds of issues. That said, I've heard many similar (or worse) horror stories about them. Around 4 years ago I switched everything over to Google Domains. Been extremely happy with the service and find the UI and configuration process much more user friendly.
The blockchain solves a big problem for distributers: it makes DRM attractive. I don't necessarily see the case for textbooks catching on with consumers easily, but in other industries, like film, having the NFT "collectible" version of the item is attractive to some consumers. Of course the DRM protections could likely be trivially bypassed, but consumers could more easily make back a return on their original purchase after they're done with an item, and for collectibles, could display these purchases for others to see. This incentivizes the consumer to desire the DRM-protected item over the off chain asset. The film industry has already begun to explore this with distribution platforms such as https://vuele.io . Definitely not in support of it, but it seems a logical way for blockchain tech to be adopted into these industries.
It's interesting how little this is talked about. In the case of something like Vuele, they don't need to have an external database (the blockchain) for their concept to work. They could allow Vuele accounts to trade ownership of download rights and set up a marketplace for people to buy and sell.
But given the option to buy the right to download Zero Contact from some Vuele user or buy the download from the Apple store, why would anyone choose Vuele?
I think the bet on NFTs is that enough people will buy into the concept that it will legitimize itself. No one would want to go out of their way to buy movies from Vuele but if NFTs were to become popular enough people may be willing to buy movies from popular NFT marketplaces like Opensea, which they may already be buying other things from.
The initial impetus is dependent on people having an innate desire for scarcity. It's not solely about speculation. If you tell people they can be one of twenty people to own the original Vuele copy of Zero Contact there are going to be some buyers.
