I see containers, at least when used this way, as a consolidation loan for technical debt. They let you consolidate your existing debt load embodied in all your messy uninstallable ball of crap software and then max out your credit again.
One of the issues here is the lost art of writing installable and well-organized software. It's quite normal these days to have services and apps that consist of multiple often redundant services and sub-applications wired haphazardly together with crap strewn all over systems.
It may sound contrarian, but I was very, very recently looking at a project that uses three or four different base containers because the people involved can't agree to use the same flavor of linux.
It's more like they are doing the technical equivalent of credit card churning but never closing out the accounts. I have never seen anything like this, and I have, on and off in my career, worked in contexts best described as "software superfund decon expert."
One of the issues here is the lost art of writing installable and well-organized software. It's quite normal these days to have services and apps that consist of multiple often redundant services and sub-applications wired haphazardly together with crap strewn all over systems.