TL;DR: The licensing change hit us on a Thursday afternoon — Docker Inc. quietly updated their terms and suddenly Docker Desktop required a paid subscription for companies with more than 250 employees or $10M in revenue.

📖 Reading time: ~33 min

What's in this article

Why I Started Looking Past Docker

Quick Comparison Table Before You Read Further

Podman: The Drop-In Replacement That Almost Works

containerd + nerdctl: The Kubernetes-Native Path

Lima: The macOS-Specific Option Worth Knowing

The Compose Problem: Where All Alternatives Still Struggle

CI/CD: Where the Alternatives Actually Shine

When to Stick With Docker

Why I Started Looking Past Docker

The licensing change hit us on a Thursday afternoon — Docker Inc. quietly updated their terms and suddenly Docker Desktop required a paid subscription for companies with more than 250 employees or $10M in revenue. We were squarely in that bracket.…