Docker Hub’s subscription service, Docker Free Team, is set to end soon for open-based project developers. The subscription previously provided free access to organizations supervised by open projects, which placed images of containers in the Docker Hub catalog. However, individual developers can still avail of the free personal placement of images. Moreover, freely accommodated “officially supported” images of open projects will continue to be available.
According to the assessment, the Docker change will affect about 2% of users who have subscribed before April 14. For affected users, it is recommended to switch to a paid tariff, which costs $420 per year, or apply for participation in the Docker-Sponsored Program. This program allows free access to Docker Hub for actively developed open projects that don’t receive commercial benefits from their developments. Projects that exist for donations, as well as non-profit funds like Cloud National Computing and Apache Foundation, are allowed to join if they comply with the corresponding criteria for Open Source Initiative.
After April 14, access to private and public repositories of images will be limited, and the accounts of organizations will be frozen. However, individual developers’ personal study records will continue to be active. For another 30 days, the owners will have the opportunity to resume access after transitioning to a paid tariff. But after that, the images and accounts of organizations will be deleted, and the names are reserved to not be registered by attackers.
The Docker Hub community is concerned that this move may disturb the work of various infrastructures tied to the images of containers loaded from Docker Hub, and no one knows which images of which projects will be deleted. Although a warning about the upcoming termination of work is displayed in the personal office of the owner of the image, there is no guarantee that the image used will not disappear. Thus, open projects using Docker Hub are advised to explain to users whether their images will be saved in Docker Hub or transferred to another service, such as the Github Container Registry.
