Docker apologizes: promises not to delete images of open source projects, but free accounts will still be deleted

This week, Docker sent an email notification to all registered developers with organization accounts stating that if users do not upgrade to the team paid plan, their account will be deleted along with all images under it. This new policy does not affect individual free version users; the policy for individual free users continues to use the 2020 version, which means that if an image has not been used for more than six months, it will be deleted.

Many open source project developers have registered as organization types on Docker Hub. Under the new policy, they must either choose to pay $480 per year or wait for their account to be deleted. This has caused great controversy and panic in the open source community.

After a week of fermentation, Docker officially issued a public apology today and changed its new policy so that unpaid accounts would still be frozen and eventually deleted but published Docker images would not be removed.

In addition, open source project developers can reapply for the DSOS project for free. If they were previously rejected but are now approved, they can continue using their account without paying any fees.

Docker explained this new policy in detail:

The Free Teams subscription plan (i.e., organization type) has been discontinued because it was poorly targeted and inferior to Docker's DSOS program designed specifically for open-source projects. Open-source projects need to apply actively; once approved, they can use it for free.

Docker's latest promise is that only when maintainers delete public images themselves will Docker remove them from Docker Hub. If maintainers take no action at all, public images will not be removed.

As far as freezing is concerned, Docker did not make any concessions: if a developer fails to apply successfully for DSOS and still refuses to pay an upgrade fee after 30 days of being frozen out of their account then while public repositories may continue running without publishing or modification capabilities private repositories will become disabled since private storage was always intended as a paid service by docker

The above timeline is April 13th; we recommend that Free Teams developers apply for DSOS plans as soon as possible; otherwise their accounts will no longer operate after expiration date - But note that project names won't get released so others cannot occupy them instead