They did not want to make different binaries for different distributions, so they used docker in the beginning. Docker was the only option - for Linux and for Windows.
Separate binaries came much later.
Storage node was always open source, but at that time, if you did not want to use docker, you would have to compile it yourself and IIRC the self-compiled version may not have worked with the official satellites (I do not know this part exactly, I never tried to compile the node, docker seemed simpler than compiling).
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We have these:
and your guide 
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Podman is exist since 2018 (and for RHEL only on that time), but docker since 2013 and it has had a wider adoption and knowable by the Community. Podman also was not available for Windows and WSL (even v1) was not exist, and WSL did not work with the containers until wsl2 anyway, but there was a Docker Desktop.
We did not want to scatter resources to support many different platforms and methods to run it in different container solutions and explain to each novice how to run a binary, so docker was a tradeoff, simple distribution and manage and also cross-platform.
Now Operators have much more wide choices how to run storagenode, or containers, include Podman, Rancher Desktop and many other alternatives like Kubernetes, Nomad or docker swarm.
Your pull request is very welcome: GitHub - storj/docs: Source for Storj docs
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