Hey! They decided to do invoicing, after all! When they couldn't find a way to take purchase orders in the initial license obligation round and we were going to have to go through a third party licensing service to pay, we did a little math, and realized that it was cheaper to let one of the guys on the DevOps team create and maintain the customized WSL install option, with the bonus of steering the developers to our internal registry out of the box, because we really don't want devs pulling stuff directly from Docker Hub without any sort of traceability, much less (shudder) pushing anything there. The prospect of having to manage hundreds (or more) of user accounts with SSO "on the roadmap, pinky swear" pushed the math over the top.
Many months later, this is still proving to have been a good call.
Moral of the story: do not try to shove a category change on large corporations without having basic things large corporations routinely require in order to give you money, especially if replacing you requires a lot less spend on extra internal labor and material than you're demanding to be paid.
Yea the WSL option is what most places I know are doing. Unfortunately, I like using MacOS so it won't work for me haha. I don't trust the team writing the generic free version for Macs.
Many months later, this is still proving to have been a good call.
Moral of the story: do not try to shove a category change on large corporations without having basic things large corporations routinely require in order to give you money, especially if replacing you requires a lot less spend on extra internal labor and material than you're demanding to be paid.