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So @Docker changed their pricing and ToS today and everyone is having a short term panic attack (myself included until I researched a bit more).
First, what changed? Well, the ToS was updated but that's a lot of legal jargon that few will read. https://www.docker.com/legal/docker-terms-service
So lets get to the bit people will read, the pricing page. To all the free users (you know who you are) two numbers should jump out. Image retention and data transfer limits. https://www.docker.com/pricing
Image retention will cleanup stale images that haven't been touched (pushed or pulled) in 6 months (not from the upload date). You'll also get a dashboard warning and email notification before they clean things up. There's a FAQ on that. https://www.docker.com/pricing/retentionfaq
The image retention policy is based on images (repositories), not tags or layers. So for anyone with a lot of older versions of their image, it would be nice to cleanup some unused versions, but Docker won't do this as long as a current tag is being used.
The data transfer limits are based on the source of the pull, not the destination repo. If you run a popular OSS project, this is where you can breath easy again. If you pull a lot of images, make sure you are logged in to bump your cap up to 200 pulls per 6 hours.
And if you are a real power user, maybe running a cluster without a local mirror (shame on you), you can pay Docker $5/mo to get unlimited pulls. If you do that, not only should you setup 2fa, but get yourself a token rather than logging in with your password.
Why is Docker doing this? Hub is expensive to run:
"As the world’s largest repository of container images, Docker Hub stores more than 15PB of data. ... we found that 4.5PB of the data have not been pushed or pulled within 6 months or longer."
"As the world’s largest repository of container images, Docker Hub stores more than 15PB of data. ... we found that 4.5PB of the data have not been pushed or pulled within 6 months or longer."
Docker had shared some of this with the Captains a while back, which was my inspiration to making my Mirroring and Caching talk this year.
Two types of users will be impacted by this. Those that pushed up some content long ago, never paid, and forgot about it. And those that pull lots of images, maybe with coworkers behind a NAT, without logging in. Now they just need to login.
