Folks, the docker runtime is open source, and not even the only one of its kind. They won’t charge for that. If they tried to make it closed source, everyone would just laugh and switch to one of several completely free alternatives. They charge for hosting images, build time on their build servers, and various “premium” developer tools you don’t need. In fact, you need none of this, you can do all of it yourself on whatever hardware you deem to be good enough. There are also many other hosted alternatives out there.
Docker thinks they have a monopoly, for some reason. If you use the technology, you are probably already aware that they don’t.
Does that include running Windows containers? It seems like the alternatives don’t support those.
Windows container runtime is free as well, simply install the docker runtime from chocolatey or winget along with the Windows Containers and Hyper-V windows features. This is what we do on some build machines for CI.
Theres no reason to use desktop other than “ease of use”
There are some reasons. Networking can get messed up, so Docker Desktop “fixed that” for you, but the dirty secret is it’s basically a Linux VM with Docker CE and some convenience network routes.
