Musings on Docker and Open Source Software

I've been keen on containers, particularly over virtual machines, ever since experimenting with OpenVZ. No extra OS fits with a nothing left to take away philosophy. Now it seems to have taken over the virtual machine on the cloud buzz. About time. Still, is it where we want to head?

A Docker talk I recently saw (it was also interesting that he ran a Ubuntu VM on a Mac) had a nice comparison with the containerization of shipping in the 1950s. Nice. But how does it compare to the Open Source world where I have a distribution like Debian or Ubuntu which packages all its software and releases every so often. Aren't packages my container? Maybe not from a security perspective but then I have AppArmor to think about too. It appears Docker is better built for a heterogeneous environments since my packages aare distro specific. But I'm not sure I want to accept heterogeneity, if I have a choice?