Development containers, old wine in new bottles
===============================================

Dev-containers
--------------
While going through my RSS feeds this week, I ran into an article
--actually, it felt more as an ad-- about development containers. Or,
more hipster-speak, "dev-containers". Of course, it was about some
Microsoft stuff, "Visual Studio Code Dev Containers extension". The
use of the editor in a Docker container was brought as the latest
marvelous invention.

In the same week there was an article in the feeds about how a
organization saved million of dollars by migrating their services from
some cloud-based Kubernetes solution to FreeBSD jails [1]. This not
only resulted in a dramatic cost reduction, but also an enormous
performance boost. In the end, it turned out that one reason of the
much better performace came from better security. The Kubernetes
containers contained a vulnerability that was exploited by coin-miners.
The real surprise was that this abuse was going on for quite some time
without anyone noticing it.

Old wine in new bottles
-----------------------
Linux containers came quite late to the show. Solaris zones and
FreeBSD jails had successfully been in use for years. Docker containers
came even later.

The use of a container, like a FreeBSD jail, for development is of
course nothing new.

That is the trouble of marketing, to sell it, you have to hype your
stuff.

FOSS is where the innovation comes from
---------------------------------------
Open source developers very often create the real ground breaking
technological developments. They are the real innovators.

Innovative open source solutions have enabled the radical progress of
technology that we have observed in this still-young century, and will
continue to do so. The others, companies such as Microsoft, are simply
parasites that intimidate and steal ideas.


[1]: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2024/07/04/from-cloud-chaos-to-freebsd-efficiency/


Last edited: $Date: 2024/07/05 09:25:10 $