TL;DR: The licensing change hit us on a Thursday afternoon — Docker Inc. quietly updated their terms and suddenly Docker Desktop required a paid subscription for companies with more than 250 employees or $10M in revenue. 📖 Reading time: ~33 min What's in this article Why I Started Looking Past Docker Quick Comparison Table Before You Read Further Podman: The Drop-In Replacement That Almost Works containerd + nerdctl: The Kubernetes-Native Path Lima: The macOS-Specific Option Worth Knowing The Compose Problem: Where All Alternatives Still Struggle CI/CD: Where the Alternatives Actually Shine When to Stick With Docker Why I Started Looking Past Docker The licensing change hit us on a Thursday afternoon — Docker Inc. quietly updated their terms and suddenly Docker Desktop required a paid subscription for companies with more than 250 employees or $10M in revenue. We were squarely in that bracket.…