The math of “a decade” seemed wrong to me, since I remembered Docker debuting in 2013 at PyCon US Santa Clara.

Then I found an HN comment I wrote a few years ago that confirmed this:

“[...] I remember that day pretty clearly because in the same lightning talk session, Solomon Hykes introduced the Python community to docker, while still working on dotCloud. This is what I think might have been the earliest public and recorded tech talk on the subject:”

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/1vui-LupKJI?t=1579

Note: starts at t=1579, which is 26:19.

Just being pedantic though. That’s about 13 years ago. The lightning talk is fun as a bit of computing history.

(Edit: as I was digging through the paper, they do cite this YouTube presentation, or a copy of it anyway, in the footnotes. And they refer to a 2013 release. Perhaps there was a multi-year delay between the paper being submitted to ACM with this title and it being published. Again, just being pedantic!)

From another comment below, it's just a nice short title to convey that we're going back in time and not one to set your watch by.

    We first submitted the article to the CACM a while ago.
    The review process takes some time and "Twelve years of
    Docker containers" didn't have quite the same vibe.

You’re right, it was 2014. I was there on HN when docker was announced by shykes. It was a godsend because I was getting bummed by the alternatives like LXC, juju charms or vagrant.

Here’s the announcement from 2013:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408002