[maigret]

> How is that different from any piece of software that an employee will want in any sort of enterprise setting?

Open source is different in exactly that, no procurement.

Finance makes procurement annoying so people are not motivated to go through it.

[devjab]

Around here it's usually a lot harder to get open source software approved with IT because they tend to dislike products where they can't call a compant. Licensing is easier of course, but for a lot of software licensing is virtually automatic. With Docker it's billed by the amount of people in the Docker AD group, and it tells EU tax deductable automatically.

Not that this should be an argument for docker. The idea that having someone to call makes a piece of software "safer" is as ridiculous at it sounds. Especially if you've ever tried "calling" a company you buy 20 licenses from, and when I say call what I really mean is talking with a chatbot and then waiting a month for them to get back to you via email. But IT's gonna IT.

[mgkimsal]

That assumes that you can, in fact, install that software in the first place. "Developers" sometimes get a bit of a pass, but I've been inside more than a few companies where... no one could install anything at all, regardless of whether there was a cost. Requesting some software would usually get someone with too much time on their hands (who would also complain about being overworked) asking what you need, why you need it, why you didn't try something else, do you really need it, etc. In some scenarios the 'free' works against, because "there's no support". I was seeing this as late as 2019 at a company - it felt like being back in 1997.

[nightpool]

Cool. Then keep using Docker Desktop if you want to. That's not the situation most of the people in this thread are talking about though.