Question about Intellectual Property note

[hairyhenderson]

Hi! 👋

Someone in our community noticed this note in the Docker Official Images docs:

Note

Docker Official Images are an intellectual property of Docker.

and was curious what this meant... I'm also curious what this means, as it seems to be fairly obvious that most of the content of the official images are not actually Docker Inc's IP.

Also the term "intellectual property" appears nowhere in this repo - I would hope that if Docker Inc was claiming IP rights over official images that would at least be documented on the official-images README.

Relatedly, but probably just a docs bug - the same note exists in https://docs.docker.com/registry/recipes/mirror/ and seems a bit out of place...

[yosifkit]

Great question. Yeah, all the Docker Official Images' Dockerfiles (+ context), and build scripts/tools are all under OSI-approved open source licenses (as far as I remember); most of the contained software is as well.

I've asked some internal people at Docker, and I'll let you know what they say.

[asponzan]

I was wondering if there was any additional information from the internal Docker team?

[nemobis]

To avoid risks of FUD, it would also help to use more precise terminology. What is being claimed? Copyright? Patents? Trademarks? Something else? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

[yosifkit]

I've asked some internal people at Docker, and I'll let you know what they say.

I'm still waiting on a response and will continue to follow up with them and respond here.

[whalelines]

What this phrase means is that the use of Docker Official Images is subject to Docker's Terms of Service. We are updating the docs to more clearly reflect this intention. Thanks for your patience.

[tianon]

Updated via docker/docs#19745 ❤️