I think calling it an emulation downplays podman. Docker and podman are both container runtimes. Docker came first and is known synonymously with containers, whereas podman is newer and attempts to fix docker’s problems.

One outcome of this is podman chose to match docker’s cli very closely so nobody needs to learn a new cli. You can even put podman on the docker socket so “docker [command]” runs with podman.

If you expected someone’s fledgling project that’s just getting started to be as polished and refined as something that’s had thousands of dev hours over the last 5-10 years then that’s just bad expectations management. It will get better.