Docker sunsetting Free Teams — what it means and what are the alternatives

A couple of days ago a lot of you received the following email from Docker:

“Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations

Free Team organizations are a legacy subscription tier that no longer exists. This tier included many of the same features, rate, and functionality as a paid Docker Team subscription […]”

It then says that everyone needs to upgrade to a paid subscription before April 14, 2023 otherwise all the data will be eventually deleted.

This is an especially sad day for me. I use Docker on a daily basis and I’ve also contributed to the “Docker environment” by creating tools and a lot of Docker images that are publicly available and I am not happy about the direction Docker is taking.

In this post I want to explain what this means and what are the alternatives for the ones (like me) who do not want to switch to a paid subscription.

Sunsettings Free Team organizations: what it means

When discussing organizations in the context of Docker, we are primarily referring to Docker Hub, a cloud-based repository service for storing and sharing Docker container images. It enables developers to create, store, and distribute their Docker…