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Is Docker CLI free of charge?

4 points by stpedgwdgfhgdd ↗ HN
I was under the impression that Docker Desktop is paid (5+) users, but Docker CLI free of charge on Mac. You need the daemon to run images. The documentation is not clear; it says that Docker Engine is open source, but not whether it is paid or not. Thoughts?

8 comments

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h2odragon
Even if it doesnt require money at the moment, I wouldn't count on it remaining that way.
yuppie_scum
It’s free. Podman is a compatible alternative though.
thiago_fm
Just use podman, it works just as good
fhaldridge7
I've been using Rancher Desktop for a while on my mac and it works just as well as Docker desktop
speedgoose
Yes, the Docker engine and Docker cli are free. You can use Colima to easily setup a vm.
eyeris
Yeah it is. Desktop is the gui. Heard lots of good things about Orbstack as the gui replacement.
stpedgwdgfhgdd
update: I moved to Podman (Docker convinced IT apparently that there is no free Docker for Mac anymore....)

Anyway, the change is not completely trivial. You can create an alias for docker, but some shell scripts refer to docker and an alias doesn't solve that problem