but you should also keep in mind that offering free service for several years is usually exactly what gets a new tech company enough traction to become a profitable company at all.
How does this change the situation?
Also, to be clear:
I am speaking about a particular kind of situation, not about just any kind of donation. It would be different with software or a platform offered for free. This would be ordinary baiting to later coerce the trapped user to switch to a paid plan. One should not feel entitled to having it for free, but accusing the company of fraudulent practice wouldn’t be exaggeration.
But, with the Docker situation, it’s primarily about the storage space and bandwidth, which are widely offered resources. Not only there are other Docker registers,
(1) one can deploy own instance (it’s open) and
Docker tells one how to do this.
(1) Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft to name the big ones.