They abandoned documentation (edit: for the open source codebase) a couple of weeks ago - that seems more significant.
From their Slack on Oct 10:
"The documentation sites at docs.min.io/community have been pulled of this morning and will redirect to the equivalent AIStor documentation where possible". [emphasis mine]
The minio/docs repository hasn't been updated in 2 weeks now, and the implication is that isn't going to be.
Even when I set up a minio cluster this February, it was both impressively easy and hard in a few small aspects. The most crucial installation tips - around 100Gb networking, Linux kernel tunables and fault-finding - were hung off comments on their github, talking about files that were deleted from the repository years ago.
I've built a cluster for a client that's being expanded to ≈100PB this year. The price of support comes in at at slightly less than the equivalent amount of S3 storage (not including the actual hosting costs!). The value of it just isn't that high to my client - so I guess we're just coasting on what we can get now, and will have to see what real community might form around the source.
I'm not a free software die-hard so I'm grateful for the work minio have put into the world, and the business it's enabling. But it seems super-clear they're stopping those contributions, and I'd bet the final open source release will happen in the next year.
If anyone else is hosting with minio & can't afford the support either :) please drop me a line and maybe we can get something going.
>The price of support comes in at at slightly less than the equivalent amount of S3 storage
That's absurd. I would be running to NetApp and Dell for competitive object storage quotes then. Haven't done pricing on either one recently but at least a few years ago they were roughly half the price of S3 all in (including hosting costs).
That does sound much worse than hiding the pre-built images from users. I hope that documentation is archived. There's probably some benefit in documenting those installation tips elsewhere besides Github comments.
During an upgrade, I discovered that the console had been removed without any prior notice. MinIO really pissed me off.
Over a month ago, I started looking for a MinIO alternative and found RustFS. I've been testing RustFS for over a month now, and the product continues to improve, with the community fixing bugs very quickly.
I hope YC will invest in this company.
Not necessarily, but if there's a cost to providing free support to the community like official container images, then it will get cut. People comment that it's "free" to provide these things through Github, but it actually has a cost to the maintainers in time, and it's frankly an easy business decision to stop doing that at times in favor of roadmap work that produces business value.
What I'm learning from this is to provide basically zero support from the outset and let it grow organically if I ever build a business on an open source product. As soon as you stop supporting anything for free someone feels entitled to it.
With 100PB clusters being built and not a cent going to them, you can see why minio has gone this route. I wonder if they will be "valkeyed"? Not by AWS presumably.
That's the open source model. It's entirely predictable that if you provide software at no cost that is capable of running 100PB clusters, that some people will and you won't get paid, because those are the terms that you set.
It's fine to change your mind, but doing it in this way doesn't build goodwill. It would be better if they made an announcement that they would stop creating/distributing images on some future date; I'm sure that would also be poorly received, but it would show organizational capacity for continuity.
If I'm considering paying them for support, especially at the prices quoted elsewhere in the thread, I need to know they won't drop support for my wacky system on a whim. (If my system wasn't wacky, I probably wouldn't need paid support)
That's a strange mindset, IMO. I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet, and it's weird to expect companies to have usage-based monetization on the tools they've made for others.
> If you were given the ratchet and then someone wanted to charge you every time you use it you would also be pissed.
People gotta eat. If someone's making valuable tools and giving them away, they still need to get paid somehow. If people aren't voluntarily tipping them enough, then something's gotta give.
There have been too many stories of open source developers basically burning themselves out for years, then it comes out that they're barely scraping by and can't take it anymore.
> People gotta eat. If someone's making valuable tools and giving them away, they still need to get paid somehow. If people aren't voluntarily tipping them enough, then something's gotta give.
No one is saying people can't charge for their work though.
Nuantrix distributed a version that was still Apache licensed and merely failed to disclose they had made changes.
This is after MinIO asserted that Weka had also stolen their AGPL-licensed code, showing that they extracted binaries from the distribution. They forgot that that 3-month old (unmodified) version was still Apache licensed though.
MinIO generally don't seem to consult lawyers often. They haven't even set up copyright assignment / CLA immediately after switching the license, so technically they are also incapable of selling AGPL license exceptions just like everyone else.
I've done my best to keep MinIO away from most infra I manage, not because of legal concerns but because it was kind of obvious they'd eventually go full scorched earth and either drop images or the source code distribution all together. Maybe now we can all move on to a fork, or SeaweedFS, or Ceph, or literally anything else.
Nah, it's fine. It's Open Source, you can document it yourself if you need to! But there is no obligation from the MinIO authors to provide it, you're not entitled to it.
It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images. I'm sure if there is enough demand, someone else who is trustworthy will step up and automate building them.
What I'd like to complain about instead is the pricing page on the Min.io webpage - it doesn't list any pricing. Looking at https://cloudian.com/blog/minios-ui-removal-leaves-organizat... it seems the prices are not cheap at all (minimum of $96,000 per year). Note that Cloudian is a competitor offering a closed-source product.
When you always published and built Docker images for the public you are creating an expectation, people will rely on that and will chose your software based on that expectation.
You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images especially after a CVE and with no prior notice (except a hidden commit 4 days ago that updated the README) is approaching malicious-level actions.
If they truly cared about their community and still wanted to go through the decision of not offering public docker builds the responsible thing to do is offer a warning period, start adding notices in the repo (gh and docker) and create an easy migration path, even endorse or help some community members who would be fine with taking care of the public builds of the image.
But no, they introduced the change, made no public statement about it, waited for someone to notice this, offered no explanation and went silent. After a huge CVE. Irresponsible.
> When you always published and built Docker images for the public you are creating an expectation
That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though.
> people will rely on that and will chose your software based on that expectation
That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
> You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images […] is approaching malicious-level actions.
I really don’t get this entitlement. “You are still doing unpaid work I benefit from, but you used to do more, therefore you are malicious.” is something I really cannot get behind.
"That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though."
This is true legally, but not otherwise (socially, practically)
"That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody."
Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall.
Imagine I provide free electricity to everyone in my town. I encourage everyone to use it. I do it all for free. I'm very careful to ensure the legal framework means i have no obligation, and everyone knows i have no obligations to them legally. They all take me up on it. All the other providers wither and die as a result. 15 years later, i decide to shut it all down on a whim because i want to move on to other things. The lights go out for the town everywhere.
Saying "i have no legal obligations" is true, but expecting people to not be pissed off, complain, and expect me to not do this is at best, naive.
Calling them entitled is even funnier. It's sort of irrelevant if they are entitled or not, after i put them in this position.
Legal obligation is not the only form of obligation, and not even the interesting ones most of the time.
More importantly - society has never survived on legal obligation alone.
I do not think you would enjoy living in a world where legal obligation is the only thing that mattered.
This is a bad analogy. We are talking about building a very simple Docker image.
It is more like you went around your neighborhood and turned peoples lights on in the evening, then stopped.
Sure, it’s a lost convenience, but people can easily choose to just… push the button themselves. Or pay somebody to continue doing it for them. Or get a timer.
It’s really not a big deal, and there are plenty of alternatives.
OK - I live in a place that's snowy for a lot of the year. I shovel not only my sidewalk but my neighbours' several houses on both sides. People are really happy and grateful. Over the years Mr. Johnson the senior on a fixed pension next door loses mobility and is really appreciative I keep his walk clean. The couple next to him has a new baby and a clear sidewalk helps them load up all the accompanying gear into the car. My snowbird neighbours are happy that their walk is accessible when they're out of town. The dad who walks several kids to school is happy there's less snow to trudge through twice a day (in both directions). The mail carrier is less likely to slip and is grateful. Dog walkers and (crazy) winter joggers don't even consciously realize the improvement but still benefit.
Then I decide to stop. It doesn't really matter why, I wasn't getting paid or had not made any sort of formal agreement or promise, I just don't want to do it anymore. Now I shovel my sidewalk to the property line exactly and that's it. Hey, that's my legal obligation; I don't need to do any more! Mr. Johnson now has a lot more trouble getting out of his house; we see him a lot less. The baby is crying while new mom slips around trying to load up strollers and diaper bags and a car seat. The snowbirds just got fined by city bylaw for not clearing their walk. That dad's school trip is just a little longer, colder and unpleasant.
Hey, this isn't my fault! All those people took my effort for granted; I never promised to shovel their walks! They have no basis to judge me! But you better believe that this decision reduced their assessment that I'm a "good neighbour". Community is built mostly on implicit agreements, norms and conventions that are established through practice & conduct over time. You're arguing the right/wrong of this in the face of legal formalizations, while others are just saying it is a fact, not weighing the benefits and obligations.
Actually, in your analogy the reason why you stopped matters a great deal. For example, if you stopped shoveling snow because you are sick/injured, or because you are caring for a family member, nobody would think less of you as a neighbor. It's only if you stopped for a selfish reason that people would negatively judge your neighborliness. So to the extent that the analogy is instructive as to how we should think about MinIO's actions, we would have to judge the reason why they did this and decide whether that is worth thinking less of them.
I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad. Minio's sold you this free light bulb and they also freely offered the service to upgrade it to the newest version every time a new lightbulb was released. There are many light bulb brands out there, some paid, some free, most of them also offer the service to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, even the free ones.
Then Minio decided to disable the feature to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, the code to update it is still there, they just don't want to do it anymore. Conveniently there is a Minio+ enterprise plan that has this feature. But hey! they tell you that you can easily set up your own server to update your lightbulb automatically. And most enterprise clients or people who have Minio lightbulbs in their office will do that.
But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically.
In short: Minio has the legal right to do whatever they want, people using minio have the right to be pissed. It's an all around bad publicity stunt and if I was a Minio investor I would really wonder why they are trying to piss off their loyal user base for a quick buck.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to fulfill their own "societal obligations" and contribute back to the community they've benefited (taken) from.
I agree, but it is always harder to have someone fill a void for a previously solved problem. I think they eventually will, but it's almost like maintenance programming vs. greenfield development; it's a harder task that's not much fun, plus the interpretation that you need to do a buch of work for something you previously already had. Ill-will towards MinIO is completely understandable.
All those people lurking while no one gets the idea to "ok, then I'll do the job for all of you" thing seems like the societal contract has been broken long ago.
The point is not about what Minio's legally required obligations are.
The point is, there is a community project, and Minio has revealed they are leaving the community. It's not illegal that they do so, any more than divorce is illegal, but it's concerning to anyone who views themselves as part of that community.
It raises a point that is it smart to join a new community that depends on the same people or organization.
Your persistent inability to comprehend this makes you look like a poor candidate for future professional collaboration. Maybe you are autistic, maybe just a shill, but it's not helping you.
> I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad
There are a lot of paragraphs in this thread laying the groundwork for this subtle strawman, but neither you nor DannyBee are addressing the real opposing position. That's the one that says there is no legal obligation and there is no social obligation. You're both treating the latter as if agreement about its existence is a forgone conclusion not in dispute. But of course it's in dispute. It's the basis of the dispute.
> But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically.
What keeps those enthusiasts from setting up a scheduled GitHub Action (or whatever system they prefer to use) to build the image for themselves?
How much (amortized) effort are we actually talking about here? One minute per release?
Bad analogy, MinIO isn't a basic commodity required for life.
Maybe a car analogy (because they hardly work). It's like lending your car to someone everyday then stopping, then the person complains that they have no way to get around. But there is walking, biking, busses or buying your own car.
I don't see how "basic commodity required for life" is a necessary criteria for any ethical standards to apply at all. This is about trust, community and how to be a good project steward.
Then will you be volunteering your time and resources? Remember: once you start volunteering, you cannot stop, because you will "break everyone's trust and expectations" or even be "malicious". Happy volunteering.
Did you read the comments on Github (linked by the title)?
So many commenters are just plain rude. They got free value for along time. Someone giving the free value decides to allocate their time otherwise. And the long-time receivers of the free value now cannot behave.
And you seem to make excuses for them...
It's just rude to behave like that after having enjoyed gifts for so long. They behave like spoiled children. Nothing to defend IMHO.
You're essentially saying that only users who contribute to OSS are worthy of attention and support. This is no different than saying that only commercial users, or those from specific countries, backgrounds, or industries are worthy of the same.
Those users who create issues, request features, and, yes, ask for support, are as valuable as those who contribute code or money. They're all part of the same community of users that help build a successful product. And they do it for free for you, because they're passionate about the product itself.
If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit by using a restrictive license and business model. OSS is not for you.
Yes, some people can be rude, demanding, and unworthy of your attention. But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children.
> If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit
FOSS licenses already do that: they shout at you in all-caps that the authors PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
Meanwhile the licenses don't say anything about communities.
For better or worse, OSI convinced everyone that "open source" is synonymous with using specific licenses that meet their definition. If that's the case, then how can it be a "fundamental misunderstanding of OSS" to strictly interpret OSS by the terms of the licenses, which don't mention any sort of "social contract", while they do include language explicitly contrary to such expectations of users?
I think if you analyzed your day to day life you'd be surprised with how many reliances you have on norms and social contracts. I personally don't want to live in a world that depends on an explicit legal basis for every single thing, and I doubt you want to either.
The GP didn't say it entitled them to anything, but that it created a sense of entitlement. You are correct there's no contractual obligation to do so, but it was likely a part of the decision to go with their solution, i.e. "they make it easy to deploy!". It is a very logical conclusion to say "they just made it HARDER THAN BEFORE to deploy".
Promises are not always explicit written permission; that's why I got in trouble for re-broadcasting major-league baseball with only implicit verbal permission (thanks, Simpsons!)
Have you not seen some of the replies at the link?
For example:
"You are joking ?!
The commit about source only is 4 days old (9e49d5e)
We are currently paying for a license while using the open source version, you already removed the oidc code from UI console and now docker images. We are not happy by this lock-in. We will discuss this internally, but you may loose a paying customer with this behavior."
I do this frequently. To prevent vendor lock in and allow us to easily pivot if pricing gets out line. We pay to support the project and get technical support when needed. Considering how little we use technical support. It should be a good deal for the company.
For one: Using open source version often is a lot simpler. Commercial versions are hidden behind authentication and other weird systems to download. User experience can be a lot better.
Then there are ideological reasons: Purposly trying to make the open source version sustainable.
And then reduced lockin etc. by not using Enterprise only features by accident/convenience, which leaves the door open to leave the contract.
“I’m not legally required to be nice” has become a classic and very common HN/Reddit argument. While true, it’s kind of beside the point. People often go beyond what they are legally obligated to do, and other people often expect others to go beyond what we are legally obligated to do. This is about nice vs. not-nice instead of legal vs. illegal.
You're correct and the project isn't entitled to any good will or usage from the community either. So they get what they get, just like the community. Or you know, everyone can just give a shit about each other even if it's a bit more effort.
> Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
When a restaurant which you've been going to for years one day decides to serve you your favorite meal with a bit of poop on the side, do you not have the right to be upset about it? They're not under any obligation to serve you meals you're happy with. There was no contract or promise. The fact you're paying for their service doesn't buy you these rights either. Those are just the terms of service both parties have agreed to.
Similarly, open source software is much more than a license. There is a basic social contract of not being an asshole to users of your product, which is an unwritten rule not just in software and industry in general, but in society as a whole. The free software movement is an extension of this mindset, and focuses on building software for the benefit of everyone, not just those who happen to pay for it, or those who meet your specific criteria. Claiming you support this philosophy, while acting against it, is hypocritical, and abusive towards people who do believe in it. And your point is that that people who complain about this are entitled? Give me a break.
If you want to place restrictions on how your software is used and who gets to enjoy it, that's fine, but make those terms explicit by choosing the appropriate license and business model from the start. Stop abusing OSS as a marketing tactic.[1]
Why isn't there similar expectations for users of Open source? That is be ready to take over yourself if maintainers do not want to do something anymore? Do not ask or demand anything. Do not expect anything but the code. To understand that you can not expect or be entitled to anything. And celebrate what you get just now.
With this the solution becomes obvious. You select piece of technology to build on you are fully and ready to take over it for purposes you want to use for it. The code is shared and you should not expect anything more.
> Why isn't there similar expectations for users of Open source? That is be ready to take over yourself if maintainers do not want to do something anymore?
Of course there is. Which is why many hostile projects get forked.
"That is the beauty of OSS", I hear you say. And I agree, but most people aren't developers. Even those who are, might not be familiar with the technology to continue maintaining the project. And even those who are, will still need time and effort to understand the codebase at a level that they're comfortable with maintaining it. And even those who are interested in all of that, might not do a good job at it.
So, ultimately, it is a very small subset of users who would not only have the capability to continue maintenance, but would manage to do as well as the original maintainers for the benefit of the entire community.
Most people saw an interesting piece of software, gave it a try and enjoyed it, and, if the project is successful, would probably like to continue using it. When the original developer ignores or is actively hostile towards these users, you're saying that they have no right to be upset about it? That's what I find ridiculous.
Yes, some people can be demanding and annoying, but that's true regardless if they're a paying customer, a contributor, or a "freeloader". The way you deal with this is by communicating and setting clear boundaries, not by alienating your user base.
I think you are digging in a little too hard here. If someone offers a capability that you don't have, and you build that into something you use, then saying that they should be ready for it to go away at any time and be happy to have had it, seems a little too much.
If there had never been an offer, they would not have built around it, and would have found another solution and, even if harder or more inconvenient, learned how to use that and built around that. Sure, no one is obligated to continue to provide them with the product, but saying that they are being unreasonable for expecting a little bit of warning time before having support pulled is a bit unrealistic.
I know we have done the metaphors to death already, but let's try another one: imagine if someone gave you a ride to work every day for years and one morning they didn't show up and you couldn't get in touch with them. You should have had a backup plan, and you shouldn't have depended on them, but it will take you a while to find a car and rearrange your schedule and learn how to drive or whatever you have to do, and all they had to do was notify you a month or two earlier that they wouldn't be able to do it anymore.
Metaphor I often see in FOSS. You are this hobby painter sitting every morning on Monmartre square in Paris, painting. It attracts people's eyes. They love your work and you become a sensation, going viral. Instagram influencers from around the world just need you in their picture, they say. You just shrug and paint. One day you got bored of Monmartre. Of pleasing the crowds. You want rest, a spot in nature to paint in peace. When the crowd learns, an angry oproar bursts out, and people demand you stick to your familiar spot, or else.
Huh, even employment nowadays doesn't come with month or two notice from employers. And here some one giving things gratis need to issue notice lest you might be inconvenienced.
Do you actually want everyone to treat everyone else like employers treat their employees? I don't think that is as good of an argument as you think it is.
> If you want to place restrictions on how your software is used and who gets to enjoy it, that's fine, but make those terms explicit by choosing the appropriate license and business model from the start. Stop abusing OSS as a marketing tactic.
But MinIO didn't do any of that. They're still a 100% open-source project, with the proper license.
> The fact you're paying for their service doesn't buy you these rights either.
It certainly does. In the UK and many other countries (possibly not the US), as soon as you are paying for a good or service you are entitled that it is satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. I think it's uncontentious that a meal at a restaurant that includes poo is not satisfactory quality. Businesses have less rights than consumers but this would still count. However, the restaurant is certainly free to refuse serving you at all (unless they're it's because of a protected characteristic e.g. because of your race or gender).
I'm not sure how much that affects your analogy since it was probably a bit too far removed from the original situation to be useful anyway.
No, it doesn't. Yes, there are general safety regulations in any country, but there are no hard rules as to what "satisfactory" or "fit for purpose" means.
My analogy was contrived to make a point. Of course serving actual feces is not "satisfactory". But I imagine that you can extrapolate my analogy into an infinite number of possibilities where someone who once enjoyed certain services or products can find them not "satisfactory" anymore. That is a commonplace situation in any marketplace, and it is perfectly valid for the person on the receiving end to be upset about it.
The one hole you can poke at my analogy, which I anticipated, is that there is (typically) no financial transaction between users and developers of free software. But my response to this is that a financial transaction is not a requirement for the social contract to be established with users of any product or service, regardless of its distribution or business model. Those users can still expect a certain level of service, and understandably so. This expectation exists whether the person is a customer or not.
A closer analogy might be a community kitchen, or garden. But it really makes no difference to my argument.
The free software philosophy is agnostic to how software is monetized. It's true that it is more difficult to do so than with proprietary software, but it's certainly not impossible. Many companies have been built and thrive on producing free software. The crucial thing, regardless of the business model, is to treat all your users with the same amount of respect, dedication, and honesty. The moment you stop doing that, don't be surprised when the community pushes back. That's on you, not on "entitled" users.
Truly strange analogy. 1) No restaurant is serving free food for years. 2) Serving poop will be really be very serious, legal issue even it was served for non-tippers.
Seems like the new definition of open source is not license, not code but What I need others must do for me
You seem more entitled to your opinion than others.
> That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
Not everything is legally enforced. Open source is a social phenomenon. Why are you so surprised that these social rules are being enforced socially?
There are obligations... it's how society functions.
> I really don’t get this entitlement. “You are still doing unpaid work I benefit from, but you used to do more, therefore you are malicious.” is something I really cannot get behind.
I really don't get this entitlement. You expect that nobody should follow any social contracts and I'm sure are always surprised when people call you out for being asocial.
There is absolutely nothing malicious or suspicious about deciding not to provide docker images or binaries. Doing so does not hide or guard you against CVE's, which are entirely unrelated to such optional processes.
Building minio is not only trivial, but is standard procedure - the latest release is in my distributions standard package repo, and they would not use prebuilt binaries. If you want that dockerized, the Dockerfile is shorter than the command-line to run said container. Dealing with Docker themselves, the corporation that has famously gone on a tax collection spree, is however quite the pain in the arse for a company.
I can't stand the entitlement people (everyone, not one particular person) feel when they are provided things for free. Sure, minio is run by a corporation these days and this applies a bit more to smaller FOSS projects, but the complaint is that the silver spoon got replaced with a stainless steel one. You're still being fed for free, despite having done nothing for it.
> I can't stand the entitlement people (everyone, not one particular person) feel when they are provided things for free.
Does it make you less frustrated to remember that humans are pattern recognition machines and our existence is essentially recognising and adapting to patterns, and so when someone does something repeatedly - regardless of if they're doing it for free - humans will recognise a pattern and adapt to it.
This is an inevitable consequence of coexisting with humans: if someone does something repeatedly, it creates an expectation. This is how learning works. If someone stops doing something, people are going to mention the consequences of their expectation not being met. Framing that as entitlement doesn't seem productive, especially in situations like this where it looks like the change wasn't properly communicated.
I don't think there can be a world where humans are able to learn/adapt/be efficient whilst not having expectations.
I believe there could be a world where people don't get pejoratively labelled as entitled for expressing the inconvenience caused by having functionality removed.
No. There is no valid justification, and the suggestion otherwise suggests a lack of understanding of what exactly these rude individuals are demanding.
The very least people can do when receiving such quite extensive voluntary favors and dedication from others is to be polite and show proper gratitude and appreciation. Otherwise, they are not worth the personal and uncompensated sacrifice of time (a quite non-renewable reosurce) and personal health required for the support. They are not even worth the stress or brain cycles required for communication.
(Not saying there aren't plenty of people showing appreciation - otherwise we would have given up on FOSS entirely a long time ago - just talking about those that don't)
Why not talk about other parts of coexisting with humans? Parasitical relationships, having to learn and adapt, communicating your needs instead of making assumptions, etc.?
> There is absolutely nothing malicious or suspicious about deciding not to provide docker images or binaries. Doing so does not hide or guard you against CVE's, which are entirely unrelated to such optional processes.
Agree. But that's not my point. If you start an oss project from scratch and you don't want to provide builds that's fine.
If you start your oss project, provide public docker images since the beginning, start getting traction, create a commercial scheme for you to monetize the project and then suddenly make a rug pull on the public builds; that is indeed irresponsible, and borderline malicious when you do it without: 1. sufficient warning time. 2. after a recent cve.
Is it malicious? I don't know. I prefer to believe in Hanlon's razor.
Is it irresponsible? 100% yes.
It’s irresponsible to use open source software, be it a docker image or the application itself, if you’re not willing to maintain it or replace it yourself at short notice if what the maintainer is willing to do/publish no longer meets your needs.
Don’t like it? Stop being a parasite and pay someone for a support contract.
It is also not irresponsible, or a rug pull. The project is still available, free, and widely packaged as it always has been, just one redundant source removed.
I don't get why one they would provide prebuilt binaries in the first place, and removing them is just cleanup.
If it were for a feature request, it would feel more justified. People feeling entitled to making feature requests is one thing. Like they can get fucked. Contribute code or pay me. But if I let something loose out into the world that suddenly started causing problems because someone discovered you could stab people with it, I'd be going around making sure all of the copies I gave out it had a knife guard put in place.
We're not going around making kitchen knives illegal. I would go out of my way to mitigate footguns where an entirely legitimate use or legitimate source of confusion would turn foul, but if you chose to go out of your way to misuse it as a hammer or ignore documentation, then you're on your own.
In this case, we're not even talking about that though, it's just a redundant prebuilt binary getting janked. I don't think it makes sense to provide prebuild binaries in the first place.
I don’t know much about the MinIO project specifically, but to me it seems to be a common misconception that just because a maintainer provides their software project under a permissive license (such as AGPL, MIT, etc.) would necessarily imply that they do this for particular ethical reasons, like caring about “the community” (whoever that is) or contributing something for the greater good.
In the end, it’s just software made available under specific terms. While I understand the inconvenience for users if things change, it feels like part of the disappointment might stem from one-sided expectations.
Nobody signed any service level agreements, the docker images were provided on good will. If this is business critical for you, consider paying someone to solve this problem for you. Maybe even consider paying for a F/OSS solution so you are not the only one funding what should be a community effort.
I do concede that they could’ve done a better job communicating these changes. But they don’t have to.
- if you rely on something, you should make sure you can reasonably rely on it (indeed, for instance by paying someone)
- if you provide something, even for free, you should expect people will rely on it and you shouldn't pull the plug overnight if you can help it (of course, if you run out of business or something bad happens to you, that's something else). There is some kind of implicit commitment. Nobody should be entitled to receive free pre-built Docker images, but OTOH what's the point of even providing pre-built Docker images if you expect people not to rely on them? This feels pointless and you probably shouldn't start providing them in the first place if you have this expectation.
> if you provide something, even for free, you should expect people will rely on it and you shouldn't pull the plug overnight if you can help it
Do you know their reasons for discontinuing? Are you even entitled to know that? It's their private matter.
> of course, if you run out of business or something bad happens to you, that's something else
Huh? So now everyone should let you know "it was out of their hands"? You have no idea how entitled you behave.
> There is some kind of implicit commitment.
No. That's just between your ears. It's putting fancy words on a feeling you have, not something that actually exists.
> what's the point of even providing pre-built Docker images if you expect people not to rely on them?
How do you know they had that expectation? And why do you care?
> This feels pointless and you probably shouldn't start providing them in the first place if you have this expectation.
You are excusing yourself for these commenters that behave like spoiled children: not thankful for what they got for free, but only bitching when it stops.
Hey, tone down, please. Also, have you, for some reason, totally missed the first point in my comment?
> Do you know their reasons for discontinuing? Are you even entitled to know that? It's their private matter.
Fully addressed in the "if you can help it" part of my comment.
> You have no idea how entitled you behave.
I have 100% idea how entitled I behave. I don't at all. I don't use MinIO. As an employee, I push internally for relying on our own infra (but we are quite good at this already).
I don't expect open source projects to provide binaries. Well, I kinda do if they've been doing it though. Expectations vs entitlement? Not the same thing.
We're discussing human interactions and expectations here.
---
So, in your opinion, what's the point of providing pre-built binaries if you don't want others to be able to rely on them then?
As someone who develops free software in my hobbies and also as an employee, if I provide binaries for free, I 100% expect people to be able to rely on them, or I just don't do it, and I would 100% feel like I'd be causing them issues by stopping doing it on short notice. I would feel like I'd owe them explanations (and their can be valid ones I'm sure - burn out would be a hell of a valid explanation to stop working on the projects at all) if I did that. They'd not be entitled to receive the binaries from me, but they would expect it and breaking expectations is not very nice. I have difficulties seeing this another way to be honest.
Let's also recall that we are talking about a project who's business might have benefited from the adoption in the first place.
> why do you care?
I could care about nothing, but that's not what I'm on HN for. I'm curious and interested.
If you were relying on their pre-built binaries, you presumably still have them. It's not like they went and deleted them off of your computer. They're just not giving you new pre-built binaries (but they're still giving you new code for free! And others pre-build binaries for free anyway). Do the old ones stop working at some point?
Note that a CVE is not an indication that something doesn't work. In the real world, they're mostly relevant only for businesses that need something like PCI compliance. Especially for something like a storage server that shouldn't be directly exposed to the Internet. If you are a business that has some compliance obligation, you have no one to blame but yourself if you rely on others' charity to meet that obligation.
Existing binaries don't stop working, but adapting your infra to get the update can take some time.
Without other elements, it's definitely not nice to stop releasing the binaries out of the blue, especially for a security fix. To me it's purely a question of breaking expectations you've built yourself (I don't mean entitlement, I mean expectations).
Now, it's indeed not the end of the world, and:
> you have no one to blame but yourself if you rely on others' charity to meet that obligation
100% agree with you on this (that's my first point in my original comment).
This is also becoming a trend with open source projects turning into source available projects with obscure and hidden ways to deploy them to prevent average users from running the software in their homelabs etc.
> You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images especially after a CVE
I hate to break it to you, but you know the CVEs are fixed in the source code, not in the Docker Image? Just build it yourself, the good folks have even provided a Dockerfile for it.
Rant about the concept of open source freeloaders: there's no such thing as open source freeloaders. If the license explicitly gives you the right to use the stuff for free, there's nothing wrong in using this right. While it would be the right thing to give money / otherwise support the projects you rely on, it's on the software developers who decide to give these rights (I also think it's the right thing to do though) to figure out the business model.
There's also nothing wrong in being upset about something you relied on disappearing overnight. If someone decides to provide something for free, they should give time for people to stop relying on this free stuff if they can.
However, I also believe you should own it if you decide to ever rely on prebuilt Docker images. More specifically, if you are relying on prebuilt Docker images, you are letting someone else decide on a part of your infra. And yes, this someone else can decide to stop providing this part of your infra overnight. This is on you.
I also don't find anything wrong in deciding to not provide binaries for your open source project, or to stop providing binaries, including docker images.
> One who does not contribute or pay appropriately; one who gets a free ride, etc. without paying a fair share.
Which I believe is a bit more generic (giving back might not be the only way of being fair).
> You may think of that term negatively
But the term carries a negative judgement, what's the point of this term otherwise? Without the judgemental part, you'd just say "using for free" or something.
The whole question is: is it fair to use open source software for free?
And I believe it is. Actually, this is stronger than this: I believe people should feel free to use free software for free, and should not be looked down for doing so. This is key for freedom 0 to be an actual thing. (I'm not set in stone in this position and would be happy change my mind on this though).
The notion of "giving back" can be discussed. I believe it is fair to get stuff from Person A for free and then helping B for free (later or earlier), in the hope that some person P will eventually help / have helped Person A for free for instance - this has the potential to provide everyone with a strong, helpful society and it would be even more enjoyable and reliable than a society that enforces pair to pair transactions.
Indeed, if someone always takes stuff for free and never contributes to anything, I would find this unfair (unless for some reason they can't contribute back, because of a disability or something). I would call this freeloading. Society cannot work like this. But you need the bigger picture to assess this.
When you start to try thinking about all this, the concepts of giving back, fairness, etc, it gets quite complicated. You also need to take in account the way society and the economical system works as a whole. What are the incentives, the motives, etc?
Basically, qualifying someone as a "open source freeloader" without context just because they use freedom 0 without paying is quite bold and might not be fair.
What if a company uses MinIO for free but provides some nice open source software?
What a weird take. Open source projects exist to be used. If you didn't want people to use it, it wouldn't be open source. As such the users are doing exactly what the creator wants: using their product. This helps the creator in many different ways.
Of course many creators are selfish. Once they have benefitted from everyone using their project they think: we want more. Then the rugpulls start. They think they no longer need their users, so now they can abuse them for additional profit.
Indeed, it feels like most people today treat open source as a placeholder for "work I don't have to do myself" and then get confused/upset when the project and their own interests no longer align and requires effort to bridge that gap in alignment.
Coolify is already doing it but your comment is on the verge of being passive agressive. I wouldn't say these are open source freeloaders because they could be using things like watchtowers etc. which automatically update and it could be a very huge deal for automated updates especially after I saw that some recent CVE of minio happened.
Simply put this just hurts the security of people running minio, I wouldn't say its freeloading, its actively harming the community. There are people in that thread who are paid customers as well saying that they lost a customer. I wouldn't say its freeloading. Minio already has some custom license or paid offering and I think that they make decent enough money out of it, providing docker files and then stopping to is kinda a shitty behaviour if they are unable to explain the reasons exactly why. I couldn't find the exact reasons on why they are doing what they are doing except making it hard for people to self host.
> I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images.
Every time I read something like this, I recall this post from Rich Hickey[1][2] on why no one is entitled to benefit from another human being's goodwill and time.
From the post:
> The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
> Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort, e.g. from inventor to community manager.
> It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about
MinIO is a commercial company that provides some open source components and some paid components and services.
This meme where nobody is allowed to be unhappy with anything when the phrase “open source” is involved is getting old. In the span of two paragraphs your comment discovered why this is frustrating people: They have been providing certain things in the open source leg of their operation and then yanking them and stuffing them under a very expensive commercial leg later, after people have begun using them.
Being upset about that is reasonable and understandable, even if it triggers some of the people who believe “open source” means nobody is allowed to be unhappy with anything, ever.
You don't understand, or don't agree with the complaints. Those are two different things, and I suspect you understand why people are complaining and instead disagree with the complaints.
People are complaining because something was available, they adopted it, then it was discontinued. Apparently with little warning, and after they'd been encouraged to adopt it by the provider of the images.
As it happens, I agree with the general idea that if folks are not paying for the convenience of builds, then it's on them to work from source. However, it's better IMO if a vendor or project start from that position rather than what's seen as a rug-pull.
Of course, it's part of the playbook: when something is new and not widely adopted, the vendor goes to great effort to encourage adoption -- then the vendor starts looking at the paid vs. free usage and sees "huh, we have a 10000:1 ratio of paid to free users, including ten megacorps that show up grabbing binaries every 10 minutes for their CI/CD farm, and asking questions in our forums, but aren't paying a penny toward development and our investors are getting pissy."
It's legit. Just gives people the impression that it is sabotaging the community. I understand why they do it (the more inconvenience the more likely people are gonna pay), but wish companies are more thoughtful on open sourcing code and how to differentiate enterprise offerings at the beginning, rather than playing tricks after gaining tractions.
They are entitled to stop building docker images. Their users are entitled to get salty and go find alternative products.
If that is Minio’s expectation, then all is good, but it seems kinda counterproductive? I never liked minio, but I certainly wouldn’t use it after seeing them remove features.
They removed the admin UI from the web frontend in the f/oss version some months ago, too. I updated for security reasons and they'd stripped the functionality out. It's a jerk move.
>I certainly wouldn’t use it after seeing them remove features.
All sorts of projects remove features all the time though, even the linux kernel drops support for hardware that may or may not be in use somewhere
>Their users are entitled to get salty and go find alternative products.
People are entitled to feeling things of course, others will only point out that it may not be justified and that the user is liable to get hurt again if they never adjust their expectations to meet reality
Certainly, there are some pretty entitled people on that github issue.
But this attitude is too far the other way. Fair enough, you are under no obligation to continue providing a free service. But isn't it fair to give a bit of notice before withdrawing it? Especially after doing it so consistently for so long. Not legally required, sure, but polite.
They haven't even given notice after withdrawing it! They just waited for someone to realise and ask about it.
Bear in mind that many paid for services, on a subscription basis, technically allow the seller to change (i.e. reduce!) the service at any time. If they act in bad faith to their free tier, what should you expect about their paid tiers? You could argue you also shouldn't be using paid services that could behave that way but I think you'd struggle not to.
I agree with what you said, but I think “courteous” might be a better word than “fair”. Whatever word you use, I take it as a sign that unpaid use isn’t as welcome as I thought.
Company makes Open Source. Open Source community enbraces it, helps it to become the defacto standard.
Company does a rug pull because they are unable to make a proper business out of it and leaves the community hanging dry.
Removing the container image build step, which was ALREADY THERE, and doing this internaly only, is the gatekeeping they are now doing.
Its like 0 effort to provide these images.
And yes pricing pages like this is always the same: You don't get any deal below 1k / month minimum because they have some pre-sales people and a payment pipeline which doesn't work for anything small or startup like.
Somehow i don't get MinIO anyway. They got over 100 Million of investment for an S3 system. Its basically a done product. Its also a typical 'invest once build it once, keep it running' thing which can easily be replicated with a little bit of investment from other companies.
I have no clue how they ever got valued over 100 Million.
I love it when entitled folks both expect to use someone else's work AND immediately downplay someone else's effort (no, I am not affiliated with Min.IO, just saying if you are scared of building a docker image yourself, maybe you should not downplay someone else's effort).
I'm not scared at all and could care less about building the image myself.
I'm also not 'entitled' because i'm doing this for another open source project we are now maintaining.
Just to be clear: THEY already have to maintain the docker image and it makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company building it for them or everyone has to build it themselves because they do not trust random companies.
There is a difference between having the official Min.IO image with a stamp of approval vs. forked repos with their version of the same image. The only thing fixing this kind of issue is a fingerprint and build caches.
They are removing the official container images because 1. this is the magic source of running your software in helm charts etc. so now you need to act 2. in some companies you are not allowed to use random container images
And you are complelty ignoring my arguments. Its not entitlement if a companies product becomes the industry standard due to Open Source and then doing a rug pull like this.
> Just to be clear: THEY already have to maintain the docker image and it makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company building it for them or everyone has to build it themselves because they do not trust random companies.
Wrong - it would be less secure if they did not share the source code and the Dockerfile along that too. As long as you take care to regularly update, where is the problem?
So just to be clear, they publish the docker image, they have an Github action which is basically free for them to build and release it into a free registry but they don't do it.
So i setup everything to do this on my github with their code and publish it on my package.
And you don't think this is stupid?
The problem is the critisim how they act and even if they release everything and its just building the image, you can't trust another source to upload the image someone else has build with this file. So now everyone has to build the same image.
> I don't understand what people are complaining about
Talk is cheap. People will complain about something they’re not legally entitled to because there’s no downside, only an upside if the company backtracks.
In the background they are probably creating tickets to mitigate the risk if the complaining doesn’t work. It’s perfectly rational.
I don’t understand the people who don’t understand this.
"It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images. "
While this is true, in all of these discussions, somewhere the notion of responsibility often gets lost.
If you publish a project, encourage people to use it, promote it heavily, etc, then get lots of users, and then decide to kill it, while it's true you legally owe nobody anything, it's sort of crazy to claim people are acting entitled when they complain.
After all, you encouraged people to use it and promoted it!
Again, do you legally owe them anything? Nope.
I am much more empathetic towards those who get surprised by the growth of their projects, or otherwise didn't try to make their project popular and decide to quit when it becomes too large too quickly and becomes a burden.
In general, if you try to encourage lots of people to use or do something and succeed at that, you end up with various forms of social responsibility to those people. That's true in most things, not just open source.
Open source does not get a pass at this social reality simply because, as a legal reality, those users are not owed anything.
Exactly. looked up their github to see what the big issue was about and they still provide the full source + the Dockerfile. It's not a huge issue that it is being made into. Does no-one know how to build a Docker image any more?
Or one can just use old images. Which is what many people started doing after their other fuckup - removing perfectly working web UI from free version.
They just can't stop shooting themselves in the foot that didn't even heal from last time.
The last tag with a working web UI is RELEASE.2025-04-22T22-12-26Z btw.
Keep in mind this is the same project that removed all useful functionality from the included web UI in the community edition with the excuse that it was too much effort to maintain.
This is another case of VC-funded companies pulling up the ladder behind themselves.
Is it an excuse? Maintaining code costs money, and the previous versions are provided under the license, and you're free to modify it, pull selective patches and maintain them yourself. While It'd be convenient if the license was a promise to develop and maintain features for free in perpetuity, it just isn't.
I run into this in non-company backed open source projects all the time too. Some maintainer gets burned out or non-interested and all they're rewarded is people with pitchforks because they thought there were some sort of obligations to provide free updates and suppport
It is sort of an excuse. I don't use MinIO precisely because of this kind of behaviour - if I cannot easily develop, configure and test our applications, I'm not adopting it commercially, specially when there are a ton of options to choose from. In the end, this hurts the MinIO's enterprise offering. Having a robust, easy to deploy community edition, with predictable features, is a great way of allowing integrators to develop and test using your product, and to help the product to gain traction.
Conversely, if instead of making your users happy to pay you, you've made them happy to use your stuff for free, you own the consequences when you stop giving that stuff away.
Welcome to HN BTW, I see you were inspired to sign up and defend the project owner.
The title of the HN submission might look a bit misleading. It's easy to misinterpret it and think MinIO stops being open source (which would be a bigger deal IMHO).
I think this would be better: "MinIO stops distributing free Docker images"
If anyone is wondering, the Dockerfile for this repo (thanks for sharing!) basically just copies the binary in, it is a 19 line dockerfile.
I see both sides of the argument here, the people maintaining minio should not have to push docker images for free, it is work to maintain and test, especially across all the host platforms. And, this work isn't that complicated if you want to do it yourself.
>I see both sides of the argument here, the people maintaining minio should not have to push docker images for free, it is work to maintain and test, especially across all the host platforms. And, this work isn't that complicated if you want to do it yourself
I don't. It's automated, it needs approximately zero attention. This is just a company that got where it was benefitting from open source taking the free toys away thinking there'll be profit in it.
Can vouch for it as an adequate self-hostable option. It has some missing features, compared to Minio, and is less compatible but works for most applications.
Garage worked for most of my use-cases but it lacks, among other endpoints[0], bucket ACLs and bucket replication. Anonymous access is also an open issue[1].
They are also a comparatively young project and while fully OSS do not, afaik, appear to have a solid long term funding source yet. Though that might be an opportunity to support them, if your company is interested in picking them.
Yeah. They also created a open source test suite for S3 clones.
This is a set of unofficial Amazon AWS S3 compatibility tests, that can be useful to people implementing software that exposes an S3-like API. The tests use the Boto2 and Boto3 libraries.
1. MinIO is a business and they don't owe anything to anyone for free.
2. People using the OSS version also are free to express their dissatisfaction.
This is not contract law though. This is about using OSS as a marketing gimmick to get mindshare, penetrate the market and then do a bait and switch.
From one hand, it is within their right to do whatever they want as marketing.
From the other hand, we as the community should be more aware of OSS as marketing vs OSS as we would like to see it.
There is a damage to the community however: this erodes trust in OSS companies, so just like "content marketing" or "influencers" or any other type of marketing, after a while it loses its effectiveness, to the detriment of real "content", real "influence" and real "OSS".
I agree with all the points you make. Just adding a detail to the following bit:
> 1. MinIO is a business and they don't owe anything to anyone for free.
I don't think MinIO discontinuing the free docker image is really the problem here. Creating and distributing such images cost them practically nothing - either in infrastructure costs or in HR costs. If they find it that difficult, they only need to say it. Either the community or another company will gladly take it up for free. Even other cloud projects have alternative distributions like Bitnami builds.
The real issue is the pattern of behavior that this move exposes. They seem to have removed the web UI from the community edition claiming that it's hard to maintain (another thing the community would have gladly taken up if they were informed). They also stopped updating the community documentation. And these largely escaped attention until the docker build was discontinued. That itself is controversial since much effort wasn't spent in letting the users know that their current image was going to suffer bitrot indefinitely. Apparently there was also a CVE which was fixed in the source. They didn't consider it necessary to at least push the fixed container as a final measure.
All these are certainly hostile and unkind towards the community and it's bordering on dishonesty. They didn't lie. But neither did they do the bare minimum expected when taking such a drastic measure. It's clear that they're withdrawing their generosity for more profits after gaining a lot of mindshare with their earlier offering. I don't believe that the docker image alone would have inflamed the community so much.
We're working on a binary build process now. We hope to have something up at https://github.com/golithus soon.
We use MinIO (community edition) a fair amount. And while we like it, it is also becoming increasingly clear that our days of deploying are numbered.
We want to start experimenting with Garage for smaller deployments, and would be interesting to hear of any production experiences there. (Anyone done multi-PiB deployments?)
Other than that we're going to start looking at Ceph/Rook for larger deployments.
garage devs have told me of 10PiB+ deployments in production, but I've never operated one at that scale so I can't share much insight into the experience. Probably best to ask on their matrix chat.
It's absolutely stunning that people actually defend this behaviour!
The community is having an outrage - and rightfully so - about a silently discontinued artifact delivery at a very critical time.
Which is their opinion and every human being is entitled to have their own opinion and state it openly.
It is also perfectly fine to expect a standardised behaviour to continue.
However, what is most important is that is perfectly fine to shame an open source product for pulling features and money grabbing people after years of gathering community and locking them in.
I don't understand the point. The entire raison d'être of this project is that you self-host it and don't pay money for S3 and control your supply chain.
If you are denied this possibility — it is much easier just to use S3.
I don't think the people in this thread have any concept of how much $$$ it costs to distribute a free container that is going to be downloaded billions of times.
You are a farmer, not a big fancy profitable one. Your tractor is from 1970 and works great, when it works. Your wife has health problems and can't really help out around the farm much - kids have gone off - so you just do things mostly by yourself. With your lucky dog Skip by your side. Even though times are tough and money ain't coming in like it used to - you still give free produce to the local schools and shelters. You've been doing it for over 20 years, and the community loves you for it.
But then your wife passes. Medical bills are too high. You can't give away free produce to the local schools anymore.
The community is outraged. They come to your farm with pitchforks. They set your barn and fields on fire.
Looking at the change to the README last week[1], it looks like MinIO went from "MinIO has no planned or scheduled releases for this repository" and "
While a new release may be cut at any time, there is no timeline for when a subsequent release may occur." to "The MinIO community edition is now distributed as source code only".
Based on promises alone, I think that means they un-dropped the open source project but still only distribute the binaries to their customers.
Quite a downward spiral for them. Wow. I mean I get the yearning for turning a profit, but this is yikes. This is the type of thing that guarantees most people using your open source / free variant never return.
I haven't used minio in years, and when I did I only fiddled around with it, but my recollection of it is that it's about the simplest build chain imaginable. Install modern golang, build minio, get single binary.
Anyone relying on an opensource tool like minio, needs to look at:
* organization supporting it
* the license
* the build chain
* who else uses it?
* the distribution artifact needed for production.
Once you've looked at that you can decide "is this an anchor I want to handcuff myself to and hope the anchor won't jump into the icy blue deep taking me and my dreams with it?"
If the org behind it ever decides to rugpull/elastic you, what're you gonna do? At least with something like minio, if they're still distributing the source it's trivial to build (and if you can't build it you should evaluate if you're in a position to rely on it).
Let's look at other cool open source things like SigNoz which distribute only docker artifacts (as far as I remember, anyhow) -- if they were to rugpull that people relying on it would be totally lost at sea.
This isn't to say that this isn't poor behavior on minio's part, but I feel like they've been signaling us for a while that they're looking to repay their VC patrons.
I have a 160TB minio cluster running for 4+ years who had dealt beautifully with node outages, one drive failure and the occassional hiccups on the datacenter.
I was okay with not having support because I am not part of their customer base. I was okay with not having the webUI, though I wish they made an option where the webUI would be available for some basic-tier paid customers. But I can not be okay with this move. They are just giving the finger to all the community. They never tried to work out a solution that could let smaller users to contribute or support.
I will seriously have to consider moving to Hetzner object storage.
Right now, my problem is that I can not update my minio cluster because I do not know of any trustworthy docker image that I can use, and the version I am on is exposed to (at least) one known CVE.
Yeah CI tests and local dev environments for code that runs against S3 in prod. Right now sifting through the alternatives for whatever is easiest to run as a container in Github actions or docker-compose...
Every time I used it for more than that I ran into performance and other concerns (like durability and consistency) pretty quickly. I cannot imagine how this is used seriously when there is something like Ceph available.
Turns out most file systems are horrible key-value stores.
>I cannot imagine how this is used seriously when there is something like Ceph available.
Adopting Ceph is adopting a Ceph engineer, any use-case with the need and funding to run Ceph on production would easily be able to pay for commercial licenses and/or contribute majorly to this or their own fork. They work in different ball-parks entirely
I use it to test my tiny written-from-scratch S3 client in my server app. But then I already have it installed, it already works, and I don't care about updates.
I'm glad to have migrated to garage in time. This is quite unfortunate though as a lot of open source projects, like plane.so, used minio via container images for s3 with docker compose.
I feel like this could be used till the time plane.so or other projects feel like they could migrate to garage or maybe just use these coollabsio minio docker image?
My problem was mostly that MinIO was not significantly better for my use-case then garage after the admin console was yanked. Thank you for the pointer though, I will take a look at this for my plane.so instance (using a private containerized minio there still).
Minions has taken away the admin UI for everything except a bucket browser in one of the last releases.
And now they have stopped publishing updates to their community edition docker images.
As the linked GitHub issue points out this now means at least one vulnerability will be unpatched (unless you install from source or switch the image) for anyone relying on updates to the original container image.
My loss exactly was that minio lost most of its appeal when it stopped having an integrated management console. It also seemed they were moving into a direction where features were gonna be more separated off for their aistore products over the community edition (a fair move but not something I want to happen to my deployment).
A developer not offering builds themself is a common thing in package managers, like apt or pacman. I don't get why it should be any different for Docker images.
The latest release is already available on ghcr and on dockerhub for amd and arm.
Well they have locked the discussion right now it seems but hope the community does something since my brother once asked for how to store audio and I thought that something like S3 could be perfect for it and wanted him to use minio or check it out.
Anyone including MinIO. So why did they stop doing it when it was so easy?
Especially because they haven't provided any reasoning for this decision, so everyone assumes the worst. I can't really think of any reason for this that puts them in a positive light either, can you?
This reminds me about the bitnami containers. They pulled the docker images so everyone migrated away because they fear they will also pull the artifacts building the project. They never said that. They seem to be continuing to updating the projects and providing access to the artifacts. It is very easy to build the dockers... it is just a dockerfile really... There is really no upside to stop updating the projects, it is free marketing...
Lots of people in this thread keep repeating the idea that, "Nobody owes anybody anything".
Sure, just like nobody owes minio goodwill or business. People sour on these kinds of things because they feel sneaky and backhanded. It tells you something about the kind of people you're working with.
Imagine if a food kitchen suddenly started charging for the food, without notice. Or they started charging to use changing rooms in clothing stores. Etc, etc. You'd, rightly, expect a negative reaction, even if the "food kitchen doesn't owe anybody anything".
The biggest misstep in these situations is the corporations avoiding being honest and communicative about why the changes are suddenly necessary. We all know, intuitively, that in most cases its because it's not for a good reason. It's because they are greedy or otherwise feel pressured to show infinite growth.
I don't see the problem here in theory - if I want to trust something fully I'll build it myself in my own pipeline, often with additional hardening as needed. It only needs scripting out the build process to fit alongside my other code. I even do this for Linux apps like Signal because I want a clean binary that matches the Git tag, packaged exactly right for my system, built with the libraries already in place locally.
What's not cool is not pushing a fresh Docker image to secure the CVE, leaving anyone using Docker hanging. Regardless of the new policy, they should have followed through and made the fix public on all distribution channels. Leaving a known unsafe version as the last release is irresponsible.
> Leaving a known unsafe version as the last release is irresponsible.
I think they should have done a better job of announcing this ahead of time (or at all, really); but there's realistically never going to be a CVE-free release to stop on, because the next CVE is just around the corner.
While not notifying of the change earlier is annoying, I also don't see anywhere stated that they're obligated to provide services in addition to just providing me the source. Moreover the build-instructions don't seem complicated at all, anyone already extracting value from this should be capable of pulling the source and keep on running with it.
I think Minio is the only Go client for S3 API and S3-compatible APIs. I cannot say I liked using it, but I had no choice. Nowadays I run my own file storage with my own API, so I no longer care.
I've used the minio-go client library for about a year now. I don't see anything in the minio-go README or elsewhere to make me think it will no longer be supported. In fact, the most recently merged PR was yesterday. There are some other Go S3 clients, like https://github.com/kelindar/s3, but I don't know if any other Go S3 clients have the complete set of features that minio-go has.
While I understand the frustration with MinIO’s approach here, I want to be upfront about what Cloudian HyperStore is and isn’t - it is designed for multi-node, multi-site deployments (think 3+ nodes minimum) and performs best on bare metal or dedicated infrastructure rather than containerized environments.
It’s a very mature S3 and offers IAM, SQS and STS endpoints as well.
If you’re running MinIO at scale in production and looking at migration options, I’m happy to connect you with our team who can discuss whether HyperStore makes sense for your use case.
That said, for single-node dev environments or lightweight deployments that many here are using MinIO for, the community alternatives mentioned in this thread are probably better fits. Different tools for different scales.
Happy to answer any technical questions about HyperStore’s architecture if helpful.
No, Cloudian did not develop MinIO - completely separate companies. MinIO was developed by MinIO Inc.
Cloudian makes HyperStore, which is our own S3-compatible object storage solution. We’re a competitor to MinIO, not affiliated with them in any way.
THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM *"AS IS"* WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND
They have no obligations to provide documentation, binaries or anything beyond the source code.
I personally think this is a better option than migrating from an open source license to a source available and I would like more project adopt this approach from the beginning of their projects, to set people's expectation right.
Which would be very relevant if anyone were trying to sue them for this - which no one is.
The license establishes the limits of legal requirements and responsibilities. It doesn't shield you from criticisms and people being annoyed with you.
I am guessing here but I do understand why they want people to open source the management code of minio and in some cases how it is integrated into a product. I understand that AGPL might not be written for these requirements but I think it is time for a new such license.
If it is part of a SaaS product that is sold I can definitely understand why this is important.
> "When MinIO is linked to a larger software stack in any form, including statically, dynamically, pipes, or containerized and invoked remotely, the AGPL v3 applies to your use. What triggers the AGPL v3 obligations is the exchanging data between the larger stack and MinIO."
Just make a fork and release built images via github actions with ghcr. Then ask people to switch to it.
The great thing about open src is the ability to walk away. removed features in new release? fork and put it back. quit complaining and be the change the world needs you to be
Have been looking for minio alternative for long already. Found versitygw lately and would like to share the joy. It feels very promising. Fits to many small or lab use cases.
It does not actually solve the trickiness of managing large storage but relies on the backend (that is usually fs like zfs in small setups).
However, seems to be quite new project plus the risk, that the owning company takes it to bad direction, is there too.
They changed their license to AGPL, removed features (Web UI, etc.) and now they don't provide docker images/binaries. It's their project but; what's next?
Why? The maintainer in the link chooses to be a dick and refuses to explain literally any of the weird decisions they've been making. That would at least help people understand?
Shame. Textbook OSS rug pull. These people love to rely on OSS, and claim how committed they are to contribute to the ecosystem and to their community, but as soon as people are drawn to the project, start relying on it and using it in the same spirit of OSS that they enjoy themselves (which their chosen license allows, mind you), then it becomes a financial burden, priorities shift to their commercial offering, there's no "bandwidth" to maintain and support the "community" edition, and so on.
STOP ABUSING OSS AS A MARKETING GIMMICK.
Or perhaps an advice to people who might actually listen: stop being attracted to open source projects because of the word "open", and because you can use it gratis. There are plenty of good proprietary and commercial software whose authors treat their users with more respect than these leeches of good will and abusers of trust.
I'm not against OSS being commercialized. In fact, I think that it's crucial for maintaining a healthy project in the long-term[1][2]. But this lingers on the developer having respect and equal regard for all their users, regardless of how much they're paying them. Yes, nobody working on software should be expected to work for free. But there is a philosophy behind this movement that goes beyond a financial transaction. It only works if everyone in the ecosystem is honest, and first and foremost has the intention of making the world a better place for everyone, by not only depending on others who have this mindset, but by adopting it themselves. Claiming to be part of the OSS community, but being hostile to your OSS users is dishonest at best, and worthy of all criticism.
>It only works if everyone in the ecosystem is honest
In general, applying this to anything with the general public, I don't expect it to work. This is why we have laws, licenses and rules in the first place. You can preach all you want but it won't change humanity, you need something concrete, something written and agreed, like a license.
Not all licenses protect the freedoms and rights you're used to in other licenses, and it needs to be taken into account when adopting any project. License terms that don't guarantee any sort of support or updates when you need them aren't in consideration at that point.
If you don't trust people, then OSS is not for you.
You can't claim to provide software as a public good, while also gatekeeping it only for specific groups of people. If you want to do that, then choose a restrictive license, with the exact terms of use you're comfortable with, and don't work in the open to begin with. That is a valid strategy if your main priority is getting paid.
My objection is towards people who use OSS licenses, but then take issue when others actually use the freedoms they've granted, and proceed to enshittify the project by removing features, putting them up behind a paywall, and in general being hostile and ignoring the user base they've gained in large part thanks to OSS. This is using OSS as a marketing tactic, which undermines the whole point of open source and the free software movement.
They abandoned documentation (edit: for the open source codebase) a couple of weeks ago - that seems more significant.
From their Slack on Oct 10:
"The documentation sites at docs.min.io/community have been pulled of this morning and will redirect to the equivalent AIStor documentation where possible". [emphasis mine]
The minio/docs repository hasn't been updated in 2 weeks now, and the implication is that isn't going to be.
Even when I set up a minio cluster this February, it was both impressively easy and hard in a few small aspects. The most crucial installation tips - around 100Gb networking, Linux kernel tunables and fault-finding - were hung off comments on their github, talking about files that were deleted from the repository years ago.
I've built a cluster for a client that's being expanded to ≈100PB this year. The price of support comes in at at slightly less than the equivalent amount of S3 storage (not including the actual hosting costs!). The value of it just isn't that high to my client - so I guess we're just coasting on what we can get now, and will have to see what real community might form around the source.
I'm not a free software die-hard so I'm grateful for the work minio have put into the world, and the business it's enabling. But it seems super-clear they're stopping those contributions, and I'd bet the final open source release will happen in the next year.
If anyone else is hosting with minio & can't afford the support either :) please drop me a line and maybe we can get something going.
>The price of support comes in at at slightly less than the equivalent amount of S3 storage
That's absurd. I would be running to NetApp and Dell for competitive object storage quotes then. Haven't done pricing on either one recently but at least a few years ago they were roughly half the price of S3 all in (including hosting costs).
That does sound much worse than hiding the pre-built images from users. I hope that documentation is archived. There's probably some benefit in documenting those installation tips elsewhere besides Github comments.
I'm sure it's been scraped to be regurgitated by a whole slew of LLMs.
During an upgrade, I discovered that the console had been removed without any prior notice. MinIO really pissed me off. Over a month ago, I started looking for a MinIO alternative and found RustFS. I've been testing RustFS for over a month now, and the product continues to improve, with the community fixing bugs very quickly. I hope YC will invest in this company.
At the same time, I'm concerned that a YC investment means more of the same, eventually: open-source until it's no longer fiscally prudent.
Is open source and making money in conflict? If they do a good job, I am willing to pay.
Not necessarily, but if there's a cost to providing free support to the community like official container images, then it will get cut. People comment that it's "free" to provide these things through Github, but it actually has a cost to the maintainers in time, and it's frankly an easy business decision to stop doing that at times in favor of roadmap work that produces business value.
What I'm learning from this is to provide basically zero support from the outset and let it grow organically if I ever build a business on an open source product. As soon as you stop supporting anything for free someone feels entitled to it.
With 100PB clusters being built and not a cent going to them, you can see why minio has gone this route. I wonder if they will be "valkeyed"? Not by AWS presumably.
That's the open source model. It's entirely predictable that if you provide software at no cost that is capable of running 100PB clusters, that some people will and you won't get paid, because those are the terms that you set.
It's fine to change your mind, but doing it in this way doesn't build goodwill. It would be better if they made an announcement that they would stop creating/distributing images on some future date; I'm sure that would also be poorly received, but it would show organizational capacity for continuity.
If I'm considering paying them for support, especially at the prices quoted elsewhere in the thread, I need to know they won't drop support for my wacky system on a whim. (If my system wasn't wacky, I probably wouldn't need paid support)
That's a strange mindset, IMO. I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet, and it's weird to expect companies to have usage-based monetization on the tools they've made for others.
did you buy the ratchet?
that's why you'd be pissed.
In this example the ratchet manufacturer would be giving them away for free though, and then get pissed when no one volunteers to pay.
If you were given the ratchet and then someone wanted to charge you every time you use it you would also be pissed.
No I wouldn’t, I would say “yeah that makes sense doesn’t it”
> If you were given the ratchet and then someone wanted to charge you every time you use it you would also be pissed.
People gotta eat. If someone's making valuable tools and giving them away, they still need to get paid somehow. If people aren't voluntarily tipping them enough, then something's gotta give.
There have been too many stories of open source developers basically burning themselves out for years, then it comes out that they're barely scraping by and can't take it anymore.
> People gotta eat. If someone's making valuable tools and giving them away, they still need to get paid somehow. If people aren't voluntarily tipping them enough, then something's gotta give.
No one is saying people can't charge for their work though.
Let me introduce you to Splunk and enterprise software in general
> I wonder if they will be "valkeyed"? Not by AWS presumably
Almost certainly not, due to the AGPL license. I know Nutanix got into hot water about distributing Minio so I don't think any big shop will fork it.
Nuantrix distributed a version that was still Apache licensed and merely failed to disclose they had made changes.
This is after MinIO asserted that Weka had also stolen their AGPL-licensed code, showing that they extracted binaries from the distribution. They forgot that that 3-month old (unmodified) version was still Apache licensed though.
MinIO generally don't seem to consult lawyers often. They haven't even set up copyright assignment / CLA immediately after switching the license, so technically they are also incapable of selling AGPL license exceptions just like everyone else.
I've done my best to keep MinIO away from most infra I manage, not because of legal concerns but because it was kind of obvious they'd eventually go full scorched earth and either drop images or the source code distribution all together. Maybe now we can all move on to a fork, or SeaweedFS, or Ceph, or literally anything else.
> showing that they extracted binaries from the distribution
Funnily enough, such action is outside of their paid product's EULA.
Nah, it's fine. It's Open Source, you can document it yourself if you need to! But there is no obligation from the MinIO authors to provide it, you're not entitled to it.
It sounds like you’re being sarcastic but what you say is correct and true.
It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images. I'm sure if there is enough demand, someone else who is trustworthy will step up and automate building them.
What I'd like to complain about instead is the pricing page on the Min.io webpage - it doesn't list any pricing. Looking at https://cloudian.com/blog/minios-ui-removal-leaves-organizat... it seems the prices are not cheap at all (minimum of $96,000 per year). Note that Cloudian is a competitor offering a closed-source product.
When you always published and built Docker images for the public you are creating an expectation, people will rely on that and will chose your software based on that expectation.
You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images especially after a CVE and with no prior notice (except a hidden commit 4 days ago that updated the README) is approaching malicious-level actions.
If they truly cared about their community and still wanted to go through the decision of not offering public docker builds the responsible thing to do is offer a warning period, start adding notices in the repo (gh and docker) and create an easy migration path, even endorse or help some community members who would be fine with taking care of the public builds of the image.
But no, they introduced the change, made no public statement about it, waited for someone to notice this, offered no explanation and went silent. After a huge CVE. Irresponsible.
> When you always published and built Docker images for the public you are creating an expectation
That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though.
> people will rely on that and will chose your software based on that expectation
That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
> You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images […] is approaching malicious-level actions.
I really don’t get this entitlement. “You are still doing unpaid work I benefit from, but you used to do more, therefore you are malicious.” is something I really cannot get behind.
"That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though."
This is true legally, but not otherwise (socially, practically)
"That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody."
Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall.
Imagine I provide free electricity to everyone in my town. I encourage everyone to use it. I do it all for free. I'm very careful to ensure the legal framework means i have no obligation, and everyone knows i have no obligations to them legally. They all take me up on it. All the other providers wither and die as a result. 15 years later, i decide to shut it all down on a whim because i want to move on to other things. The lights go out for the town everywhere.
Saying "i have no legal obligations" is true, but expecting people to not be pissed off, complain, and expect me to not do this is at best, naive.
Calling them entitled is even funnier. It's sort of irrelevant if they are entitled or not, after i put them in this position.
Legal obligation is not the only form of obligation, and not even the interesting ones most of the time.
More importantly - society has never survived on legal obligation alone.
I do not think you would enjoy living in a world where legal obligation is the only thing that mattered.
This is a bad analogy. We are talking about building a very simple Docker image.
It is more like you went around your neighborhood and turned peoples lights on in the evening, then stopped.
Sure, it’s a lost convenience, but people can easily choose to just… push the button themselves. Or pay somebody to continue doing it for them. Or get a timer.
It’s really not a big deal, and there are plenty of alternatives.
OK - I live in a place that's snowy for a lot of the year. I shovel not only my sidewalk but my neighbours' several houses on both sides. People are really happy and grateful. Over the years Mr. Johnson the senior on a fixed pension next door loses mobility and is really appreciative I keep his walk clean. The couple next to him has a new baby and a clear sidewalk helps them load up all the accompanying gear into the car. My snowbird neighbours are happy that their walk is accessible when they're out of town. The dad who walks several kids to school is happy there's less snow to trudge through twice a day (in both directions). The mail carrier is less likely to slip and is grateful. Dog walkers and (crazy) winter joggers don't even consciously realize the improvement but still benefit.
Then I decide to stop. It doesn't really matter why, I wasn't getting paid or had not made any sort of formal agreement or promise, I just don't want to do it anymore. Now I shovel my sidewalk to the property line exactly and that's it. Hey, that's my legal obligation; I don't need to do any more! Mr. Johnson now has a lot more trouble getting out of his house; we see him a lot less. The baby is crying while new mom slips around trying to load up strollers and diaper bags and a car seat. The snowbirds just got fined by city bylaw for not clearing their walk. That dad's school trip is just a little longer, colder and unpleasant.
Hey, this isn't my fault! All those people took my effort for granted; I never promised to shovel their walks! They have no basis to judge me! But you better believe that this decision reduced their assessment that I'm a "good neighbour". Community is built mostly on implicit agreements, norms and conventions that are established through practice & conduct over time. You're arguing the right/wrong of this in the face of legal formalizations, while others are just saying it is a fact, not weighing the benefits and obligations.
Actually, in your analogy the reason why you stopped matters a great deal. For example, if you stopped shoveling snow because you are sick/injured, or because you are caring for a family member, nobody would think less of you as a neighbor. It's only if you stopped for a selfish reason that people would negatively judge your neighborliness. So to the extent that the analogy is instructive as to how we should think about MinIO's actions, we would have to judge the reason why they did this and decide whether that is worth thinking less of them.
I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad. Minio's sold you this free light bulb and they also freely offered the service to upgrade it to the newest version every time a new lightbulb was released. There are many light bulb brands out there, some paid, some free, most of them also offer the service to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, even the free ones.
Then Minio decided to disable the feature to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, the code to update it is still there, they just don't want to do it anymore. Conveniently there is a Minio+ enterprise plan that has this feature. But hey! they tell you that you can easily set up your own server to update your lightbulb automatically. And most enterprise clients or people who have Minio lightbulbs in their office will do that.
But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically.
In short: Minio has the legal right to do whatever they want, people using minio have the right to be pissed. It's an all around bad publicity stunt and if I was a Minio investor I would really wonder why they are trying to piss off their loyal user base for a quick buck.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to fulfill their own "societal obligations" and contribute back to the community they've benefited (taken) from.
I agree, but it is always harder to have someone fill a void for a previously solved problem. I think they eventually will, but it's almost like maintenance programming vs. greenfield development; it's a harder task that's not much fun, plus the interpretation that you need to do a buch of work for something you previously already had. Ill-will towards MinIO is completely understandable.
All those people lurking while no one gets the idea to "ok, then I'll do the job for all of you" thing seems like the societal contract has been broken long ago.
The point is not about what Minio's legally required obligations are.
The point is, there is a community project, and Minio has revealed they are leaving the community. It's not illegal that they do so, any more than divorce is illegal, but it's concerning to anyone who views themselves as part of that community.
It raises a point that is it smart to join a new community that depends on the same people or organization.
Your persistent inability to comprehend this makes you look like a poor candidate for future professional collaboration. Maybe you are autistic, maybe just a shill, but it's not helping you.
> I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad
There are a lot of paragraphs in this thread laying the groundwork for this subtle strawman, but neither you nor DannyBee are addressing the real opposing position. That's the one that says there is no legal obligation and there is no social obligation. You're both treating the latter as if agreement about its existence is a forgone conclusion not in dispute. But of course it's in dispute. It's the basis of the dispute.
[dead]
> But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically.
What keeps those enthusiasts from setting up a scheduled GitHub Action (or whatever system they prefer to use) to build the image for themselves?
How much (amortized) effort are we actually talking about here? One minute per release?
Bad analogy, MinIO isn't a basic commodity required for life.
Maybe a car analogy (because they hardly work). It's like lending your car to someone everyday then stopping, then the person complains that they have no way to get around. But there is walking, biking, busses or buying your own car.
I don't see how "basic commodity required for life" is a necessary criteria for any ethical standards to apply at all. This is about trust, community and how to be a good project steward.
Then will you be volunteering your time and resources? Remember: once you start volunteering, you cannot stop, because you will "break everyone's trust and expectations" or even be "malicious". Happy volunteering.
The claim isn’t that “you cannot stop”, but that it’s rude to not communicate about that ahead of time.
Of course the entitlement to volunteer work is also rude, and in my opinion worse.
Electricity is not a basic commodity required for life. It is convenient for sure.
Did you read the comments on Github (linked by the title)?
So many commenters are just plain rude. They got free value for along time. Someone giving the free value decides to allocate their time otherwise. And the long-time receivers of the free value now cannot behave.
And you seem to make excuses for them...
It's just rude to behave like that after having enjoyed gifts for so long. They behave like spoiled children. Nothing to defend IMHO.
Github is awash with accounts with zero contributions to anything who use it to lobby for their personal requirements.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of OSS.
You're essentially saying that only users who contribute to OSS are worthy of attention and support. This is no different than saying that only commercial users, or those from specific countries, backgrounds, or industries are worthy of the same.
Those users who create issues, request features, and, yes, ask for support, are as valuable as those who contribute code or money. They're all part of the same community of users that help build a successful product. And they do it for free for you, because they're passionate about the product itself.
If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit by using a restrictive license and business model. OSS is not for you.
Yes, some people can be rude, demanding, and unworthy of your attention. But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children.
> If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit
FOSS licenses already do that: they shout at you in all-caps that the authors PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
Meanwhile the licenses don't say anything about communities.
For better or worse, OSI convinced everyone that "open source" is synonymous with using specific licenses that meet their definition. If that's the case, then how can it be a "fundamental misunderstanding of OSS" to strictly interpret OSS by the terms of the licenses, which don't mention any sort of "social contract", while they do include language explicitly contrary to such expectations of users?
> But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children.
True in theory but no one has infinite time to distinguish correctly between good feature requester or bad one.
I think if you analyzed your day to day life you'd be surprised with how many reliances you have on norms and social contracts. I personally don't want to live in a world that depends on an explicit legal basis for every single thing, and I doubt you want to either.
The GP didn't say it entitled them to anything, but that it created a sense of entitlement. You are correct there's no contractual obligation to do so, but it was likely a part of the decision to go with their solution, i.e. "they make it easy to deploy!". It is a very logical conclusion to say "they just made it HARDER THAN BEFORE to deploy".
Promises are not always explicit written permission; that's why I got in trouble for re-broadcasting major-league baseball with only implicit verbal permission (thanks, Simpsons!)
Have you not seen some of the replies at the link?
For example:
"You are joking ?!
The commit about source only is 4 days old (9e49d5e)
We are currently paying for a license while using the open source version, you already removed the oidc code from UI console and now docker images. We are not happy by this lock-in. We will discuss this internally, but you may loose a paying customer with this behavior."
Why would a paying customer use the open source version? Deployment in non-prod?
I do this frequently. To prevent vendor lock in and allow us to easily pivot if pricing gets out line. We pay to support the project and get technical support when needed. Considering how little we use technical support. It should be a good deal for the company.
For one: Using open source version often is a lot simpler. Commercial versions are hidden behind authentication and other weird systems to download. User experience can be a lot better.
Then there are ideological reasons: Purposly trying to make the open source version sustainable.
And then reduced lockin etc. by not using Enterprise only features by accident/convenience, which leaves the door open to leave the contract.
Calling out shitty behavior doesn’t mean you felt “entitled” to anything.
Not all shitty behavior is governed by contracts and licenses. You can be an asshole without violating the terms of a license.
“I’m not legally required to be nice” has become a classic and very common HN/Reddit argument. While true, it’s kind of beside the point. People often go beyond what they are legally obligated to do, and other people often expect others to go beyond what we are legally obligated to do. This is about nice vs. not-nice instead of legal vs. illegal.
You're correct and the project isn't entitled to any good will or usage from the community either. So they get what they get, just like the community. Or you know, everyone can just give a shit about each other even if it's a bit more effort.
> Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
When a restaurant which you've been going to for years one day decides to serve you your favorite meal with a bit of poop on the side, do you not have the right to be upset about it? They're not under any obligation to serve you meals you're happy with. There was no contract or promise. The fact you're paying for their service doesn't buy you these rights either. Those are just the terms of service both parties have agreed to.
Similarly, open source software is much more than a license. There is a basic social contract of not being an asshole to users of your product, which is an unwritten rule not just in software and industry in general, but in society as a whole. The free software movement is an extension of this mindset, and focuses on building software for the benefit of everyone, not just those who happen to pay for it, or those who meet your specific criteria. Claiming you support this philosophy, while acting against it, is hypocritical, and abusive towards people who do believe in it. And your point is that that people who complain about this are entitled? Give me a break.
If you want to place restrictions on how your software is used and who gets to enjoy it, that's fine, but make those terms explicit by choosing the appropriate license and business model from the start. Stop abusing OSS as a marketing tactic.[1]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45666757
Why isn't there similar expectations for users of Open source? That is be ready to take over yourself if maintainers do not want to do something anymore? Do not ask or demand anything. Do not expect anything but the code. To understand that you can not expect or be entitled to anything. And celebrate what you get just now.
With this the solution becomes obvious. You select piece of technology to build on you are fully and ready to take over it for purposes you want to use for it. The code is shared and you should not expect anything more.
> Why isn't there similar expectations for users of Open source? That is be ready to take over yourself if maintainers do not want to do something anymore?
Of course there is. Which is why many hostile projects get forked.
"That is the beauty of OSS", I hear you say. And I agree, but most people aren't developers. Even those who are, might not be familiar with the technology to continue maintaining the project. And even those who are, will still need time and effort to understand the codebase at a level that they're comfortable with maintaining it. And even those who are interested in all of that, might not do a good job at it.
So, ultimately, it is a very small subset of users who would not only have the capability to continue maintenance, but would manage to do as well as the original maintainers for the benefit of the entire community.
Most people saw an interesting piece of software, gave it a try and enjoyed it, and, if the project is successful, would probably like to continue using it. When the original developer ignores or is actively hostile towards these users, you're saying that they have no right to be upset about it? That's what I find ridiculous.
Yes, some people can be demanding and annoying, but that's true regardless if they're a paying customer, a contributor, or a "freeloader". The way you deal with this is by communicating and setting clear boundaries, not by alienating your user base.
I think you are digging in a little too hard here. If someone offers a capability that you don't have, and you build that into something you use, then saying that they should be ready for it to go away at any time and be happy to have had it, seems a little too much.
If there had never been an offer, they would not have built around it, and would have found another solution and, even if harder or more inconvenient, learned how to use that and built around that. Sure, no one is obligated to continue to provide them with the product, but saying that they are being unreasonable for expecting a little bit of warning time before having support pulled is a bit unrealistic.
I know we have done the metaphors to death already, but let's try another one: imagine if someone gave you a ride to work every day for years and one morning they didn't show up and you couldn't get in touch with them. You should have had a backup plan, and you shouldn't have depended on them, but it will take you a while to find a car and rearrange your schedule and learn how to drive or whatever you have to do, and all they had to do was notify you a month or two earlier that they wouldn't be able to do it anymore.
Metaphor I often see in FOSS. You are this hobby painter sitting every morning on Monmartre square in Paris, painting. It attracts people's eyes. They love your work and you become a sensation, going viral. Instagram influencers from around the world just need you in their picture, they say. You just shrug and paint. One day you got bored of Monmartre. Of pleasing the crowds. You want rest, a spot in nature to paint in peace. When the crowd learns, an angry oproar bursts out, and people demand you stick to your familiar spot, or else.
Mine was much better.
Huh, even employment nowadays doesn't come with month or two notice from employers. And here some one giving things gratis need to issue notice lest you might be inconvenienced.
Do you actually want everyone to treat everyone else like employers treat their employees? I don't think that is as good of an argument as you think it is.
You're more annoying than the people you complain about.
> If you want to place restrictions on how your software is used and who gets to enjoy it, that's fine, but make those terms explicit by choosing the appropriate license and business model from the start. Stop abusing OSS as a marketing tactic.
But MinIO didn't do any of that. They're still a 100% open-source project, with the proper license.
> The fact you're paying for their service doesn't buy you these rights either.
It certainly does. In the UK and many other countries (possibly not the US), as soon as you are paying for a good or service you are entitled that it is satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. I think it's uncontentious that a meal at a restaurant that includes poo is not satisfactory quality. Businesses have less rights than consumers but this would still count. However, the restaurant is certainly free to refuse serving you at all (unless they're it's because of a protected characteristic e.g. because of your race or gender).
I'm not sure how much that affects your analogy since it was probably a bit too far removed from the original situation to be useful anyway.
> It certainly does.
No, it doesn't. Yes, there are general safety regulations in any country, but there are no hard rules as to what "satisfactory" or "fit for purpose" means.
My analogy was contrived to make a point. Of course serving actual feces is not "satisfactory". But I imagine that you can extrapolate my analogy into an infinite number of possibilities where someone who once enjoyed certain services or products can find them not "satisfactory" anymore. That is a commonplace situation in any marketplace, and it is perfectly valid for the person on the receiving end to be upset about it.
The one hole you can poke at my analogy, which I anticipated, is that there is (typically) no financial transaction between users and developers of free software. But my response to this is that a financial transaction is not a requirement for the social contract to be established with users of any product or service, regardless of its distribution or business model. Those users can still expect a certain level of service, and understandably so. This expectation exists whether the person is a customer or not.
A closer analogy might be a community kitchen, or garden. But it really makes no difference to my argument.
The free software philosophy is agnostic to how software is monetized. It's true that it is more difficult to do so than with proprietary software, but it's certainly not impossible. Many companies have been built and thrive on producing free software. The crucial thing, regardless of the business model, is to treat all your users with the same amount of respect, dedication, and honesty. The moment you stop doing that, don't be surprised when the community pushes back. That's on you, not on "entitled" users.
Truly strange analogy. 1) No restaurant is serving free food for years. 2) Serving poop will be really be very serious, legal issue even it was served for non-tippers.
Seems like the new definition of open source is not license, not code but What I need others must do for me
You seem more entitled to your opinion than others.
> That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.
Not everything is legally enforced. Open source is a social phenomenon. Why are you so surprised that these social rules are being enforced socially?
There are obligations... it's how society functions.
> I really don’t get this entitlement. “You are still doing unpaid work I benefit from, but you used to do more, therefore you are malicious.” is something I really cannot get behind.
I really don't get this entitlement. You expect that nobody should follow any social contracts and I'm sure are always surprised when people call you out for being asocial.
[dead]
There is absolutely nothing malicious or suspicious about deciding not to provide docker images or binaries. Doing so does not hide or guard you against CVE's, which are entirely unrelated to such optional processes.
Building minio is not only trivial, but is standard procedure - the latest release is in my distributions standard package repo, and they would not use prebuilt binaries. If you want that dockerized, the Dockerfile is shorter than the command-line to run said container. Dealing with Docker themselves, the corporation that has famously gone on a tax collection spree, is however quite the pain in the arse for a company.
I can't stand the entitlement people (everyone, not one particular person) feel when they are provided things for free. Sure, minio is run by a corporation these days and this applies a bit more to smaller FOSS projects, but the complaint is that the silver spoon got replaced with a stainless steel one. You're still being fed for free, despite having done nothing for it.
</rant>
> I can't stand the entitlement people (everyone, not one particular person) feel when they are provided things for free.
Does it make you less frustrated to remember that humans are pattern recognition machines and our existence is essentially recognising and adapting to patterns, and so when someone does something repeatedly - regardless of if they're doing it for free - humans will recognise a pattern and adapt to it.
This is an inevitable consequence of coexisting with humans: if someone does something repeatedly, it creates an expectation. This is how learning works. If someone stops doing something, people are going to mention the consequences of their expectation not being met. Framing that as entitlement doesn't seem productive, especially in situations like this where it looks like the change wasn't properly communicated.
I don't think there can be a world where humans are able to learn/adapt/be efficient whilst not having expectations.
I believe there could be a world where people don't get pejoratively labelled as entitled for expressing the inconvenience caused by having functionality removed.
> Does it make you less frustrated
No. There is no valid justification, and the suggestion otherwise suggests a lack of understanding of what exactly these rude individuals are demanding.
The very least people can do when receiving such quite extensive voluntary favors and dedication from others is to be polite and show proper gratitude and appreciation. Otherwise, they are not worth the personal and uncompensated sacrifice of time (a quite non-renewable reosurce) and personal health required for the support. They are not even worth the stress or brain cycles required for communication.
(Not saying there aren't plenty of people showing appreciation - otherwise we would have given up on FOSS entirely a long time ago - just talking about those that don't)
Funny that pattern recognition does not extend to the universal pattern of "things end". A stoic would be appalled--if they'd care.
Why not talk about other parts of coexisting with humans? Parasitical relationships, having to learn and adapt, communicating your needs instead of making assumptions, etc.?
> There is absolutely nothing malicious or suspicious about deciding not to provide docker images or binaries. Doing so does not hide or guard you against CVE's, which are entirely unrelated to such optional processes.
Agree. But that's not my point. If you start an oss project from scratch and you don't want to provide builds that's fine.
If you start your oss project, provide public docker images since the beginning, start getting traction, create a commercial scheme for you to monetize the project and then suddenly make a rug pull on the public builds; that is indeed irresponsible, and borderline malicious when you do it without: 1. sufficient warning time. 2. after a recent cve.
Is it malicious? I don't know. I prefer to believe in Hanlon's razor. Is it irresponsible? 100% yes.
It’s irresponsible to use open source software, be it a docker image or the application itself, if you’re not willing to maintain it or replace it yourself at short notice if what the maintainer is willing to do/publish no longer meets your needs.
Don’t like it? Stop being a parasite and pay someone for a support contract.
It is also not irresponsible, or a rug pull. The project is still available, free, and widely packaged as it always has been, just one redundant source removed.
I don't get why one they would provide prebuilt binaries in the first place, and removing them is just cleanup.
If it were for a feature request, it would feel more justified. People feeling entitled to making feature requests is one thing. Like they can get fucked. Contribute code or pay me. But if I let something loose out into the world that suddenly started causing problems because someone discovered you could stab people with it, I'd be going around making sure all of the copies I gave out it had a knife guard put in place.
We're not going around making kitchen knives illegal. I would go out of my way to mitigate footguns where an entirely legitimate use or legitimate source of confusion would turn foul, but if you chose to go out of your way to misuse it as a hammer or ignore documentation, then you're on your own.
In this case, we're not even talking about that though, it's just a redundant prebuilt binary getting janked. I don't think it makes sense to provide prebuild binaries in the first place.
I don’t know much about the MinIO project specifically, but to me it seems to be a common misconception that just because a maintainer provides their software project under a permissive license (such as AGPL, MIT, etc.) would necessarily imply that they do this for particular ethical reasons, like caring about “the community” (whoever that is) or contributing something for the greater good.
In the end, it’s just software made available under specific terms. While I understand the inconvenience for users if things change, it feels like part of the disappointment might stem from one-sided expectations.
Nobody signed any service level agreements, the docker images were provided on good will. If this is business critical for you, consider paying someone to solve this problem for you. Maybe even consider paying for a F/OSS solution so you are not the only one funding what should be a community effort.
I do concede that they could’ve done a better job communicating these changes. But they don’t have to.
To me, there are two aspects:
- if you rely on something, you should make sure you can reasonably rely on it (indeed, for instance by paying someone)
- if you provide something, even for free, you should expect people will rely on it and you shouldn't pull the plug overnight if you can help it (of course, if you run out of business or something bad happens to you, that's something else). There is some kind of implicit commitment. Nobody should be entitled to receive free pre-built Docker images, but OTOH what's the point of even providing pre-built Docker images if you expect people not to rely on them? This feels pointless and you probably shouldn't start providing them in the first place if you have this expectation.
> if you provide something, even for free, you should expect people will rely on it and you shouldn't pull the plug overnight if you can help it
Do you know their reasons for discontinuing? Are you even entitled to know that? It's their private matter.
> of course, if you run out of business or something bad happens to you, that's something else
Huh? So now everyone should let you know "it was out of their hands"? You have no idea how entitled you behave.
> There is some kind of implicit commitment.
No. That's just between your ears. It's putting fancy words on a feeling you have, not something that actually exists.
> what's the point of even providing pre-built Docker images if you expect people not to rely on them?
How do you know they had that expectation? And why do you care?
> This feels pointless and you probably shouldn't start providing them in the first place if you have this expectation.
You are excusing yourself for these commenters that behave like spoiled children: not thankful for what they got for free, but only bitching when it stops.
Hey, tone down, please. Also, have you, for some reason, totally missed the first point in my comment?
> Do you know their reasons for discontinuing? Are you even entitled to know that? It's their private matter.
Fully addressed in the "if you can help it" part of my comment.
> You have no idea how entitled you behave.
I have 100% idea how entitled I behave. I don't at all. I don't use MinIO. As an employee, I push internally for relying on our own infra (but we are quite good at this already).
I don't expect open source projects to provide binaries. Well, I kinda do if they've been doing it though. Expectations vs entitlement? Not the same thing.
We're discussing human interactions and expectations here.
---
So, in your opinion, what's the point of providing pre-built binaries if you don't want others to be able to rely on them then?
As someone who develops free software in my hobbies and also as an employee, if I provide binaries for free, I 100% expect people to be able to rely on them, or I just don't do it, and I would 100% feel like I'd be causing them issues by stopping doing it on short notice. I would feel like I'd owe them explanations (and their can be valid ones I'm sure - burn out would be a hell of a valid explanation to stop working on the projects at all) if I did that. They'd not be entitled to receive the binaries from me, but they would expect it and breaking expectations is not very nice. I have difficulties seeing this another way to be honest.
Let's also recall that we are talking about a project who's business might have benefited from the adoption in the first place.
> why do you care?
I could care about nothing, but that's not what I'm on HN for. I'm curious and interested.
You can read more about my views on this stuff here if it can help understand me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45667271
If you were relying on their pre-built binaries, you presumably still have them. It's not like they went and deleted them off of your computer. They're just not giving you new pre-built binaries (but they're still giving you new code for free! And others pre-build binaries for free anyway). Do the old ones stop working at some point?
Note that a CVE is not an indication that something doesn't work. In the real world, they're mostly relevant only for businesses that need something like PCI compliance. Especially for something like a storage server that shouldn't be directly exposed to the Internet. If you are a business that has some compliance obligation, you have no one to blame but yourself if you rely on others' charity to meet that obligation.
Existing binaries don't stop working, but adapting your infra to get the update can take some time.
Without other elements, it's definitely not nice to stop releasing the binaries out of the blue, especially for a security fix. To me it's purely a question of breaking expectations you've built yourself (I don't mean entitlement, I mean expectations).
Now, it's indeed not the end of the world, and:
> you have no one to blame but yourself if you rely on others' charity to meet that obligation
100% agree with you on this (that's my first point in my original comment).
This is also becoming a trend with open source projects turning into source available projects with obscure and hidden ways to deploy them to prevent average users from running the software in their homelabs etc.
> you are creating an expectation
thats entitlement but seen from the other side.
> You suddenly deciding that you won't be offering updated Docker images especially after a CVE
I hate to break it to you, but you know the CVEs are fixed in the source code, not in the Docker Image? Just build it yourself, the good folks have even provided a Dockerfile for it.
This only inconveniences open source freeloaders. Maybe you can volunteer some time to build Docker images?
Rant about the concept of open source freeloaders: there's no such thing as open source freeloaders. If the license explicitly gives you the right to use the stuff for free, there's nothing wrong in using this right. While it would be the right thing to give money / otherwise support the projects you rely on, it's on the software developers who decide to give these rights (I also think it's the right thing to do though) to figure out the business model.
There's also nothing wrong in being upset about something you relied on disappearing overnight. If someone decides to provide something for free, they should give time for people to stop relying on this free stuff if they can.
However, I also believe you should own it if you decide to ever rely on prebuilt Docker images. More specifically, if you are relying on prebuilt Docker images, you are letting someone else decide on a part of your infra. And yes, this someone else can decide to stop providing this part of your infra overnight. This is on you.
I also don't find anything wrong in deciding to not provide binaries for your open source project, or to stop providing binaries, including docker images.
freeloader (OED): a person who takes advantage of others' generosity without giving anything in return.
Sounds exactly like freeloading to me. You may think of that term negatively, but it is exactly what it is.
We also find the Wiktionary definition [1]:
> One who does not contribute or pay appropriately; one who gets a free ride, etc. without paying a fair share.
Which I believe is a bit more generic (giving back might not be the only way of being fair).
> You may think of that term negatively
But the term carries a negative judgement, what's the point of this term otherwise? Without the judgemental part, you'd just say "using for free" or something.
The whole question is: is it fair to use open source software for free?
And I believe it is. Actually, this is stronger than this: I believe people should feel free to use free software for free, and should not be looked down for doing so. This is key for freedom 0 to be an actual thing. (I'm not set in stone in this position and would be happy change my mind on this though).
The notion of "giving back" can be discussed. I believe it is fair to get stuff from Person A for free and then helping B for free (later or earlier), in the hope that some person P will eventually help / have helped Person A for free for instance - this has the potential to provide everyone with a strong, helpful society and it would be even more enjoyable and reliable than a society that enforces pair to pair transactions.
Indeed, if someone always takes stuff for free and never contributes to anything, I would find this unfair (unless for some reason they can't contribute back, because of a disability or something). I would call this freeloading. Society cannot work like this. But you need the bigger picture to assess this.
When you start to try thinking about all this, the concepts of giving back, fairness, etc, it gets quite complicated. You also need to take in account the way society and the economical system works as a whole. What are the incentives, the motives, etc?
Basically, qualifying someone as a "open source freeloader" without context just because they use freedom 0 without paying is quite bold and might not be fair.
What if a company uses MinIO for free but provides some nice open source software?
Just don't judge someone too fast.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freeloader
What a weird take. Open source projects exist to be used. If you didn't want people to use it, it wouldn't be open source. As such the users are doing exactly what the creator wants: using their product. This helps the creator in many different ways.
Of course many creators are selfish. Once they have benefitted from everyone using their project they think: we want more. Then the rugpulls start. They think they no longer need their users, so now they can abuse them for additional profit.
Fork and build your own. Isn't that the whole open source ethos? Why it was invented and how it is intended to operate.
Indeed, it feels like most people today treat open source as a placeholder for "work I don't have to do myself" and then get confused/upset when the project and their own interests no longer align and requires effort to bridge that gap in alignment.
https://github.com/coollabsio/minio
Coolify is already doing it but your comment is on the verge of being passive agressive. I wouldn't say these are open source freeloaders because they could be using things like watchtowers etc. which automatically update and it could be a very huge deal for automated updates especially after I saw that some recent CVE of minio happened.
Simply put this just hurts the security of people running minio, I wouldn't say its freeloading, its actively harming the community. There are people in that thread who are paid customers as well saying that they lost a customer. I wouldn't say its freeloading. Minio already has some custom license or paid offering and I think that they make decent enough money out of it, providing docker files and then stopping to is kinda a shitty behaviour if they are unable to explain the reasons exactly why. I couldn't find the exact reasons on why they are doing what they are doing except making it hard for people to self host.
> I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images.
Every time I read something like this, I recall this post from Rich Hickey[1][2] on why no one is entitled to benefit from another human being's goodwill and time.
From the post:
> The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
> Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort, e.g. from inventor to community manager.
[1] - https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95....
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538123
> It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about
MinIO is a commercial company that provides some open source components and some paid components and services.
This meme where nobody is allowed to be unhappy with anything when the phrase “open source” is involved is getting old. In the span of two paragraphs your comment discovered why this is frustrating people: They have been providing certain things in the open source leg of their operation and then yanking them and stuffing them under a very expensive commercial leg later, after people have begun using them.
Being upset about that is reasonable and understandable, even if it triggers some of the people who believe “open source” means nobody is allowed to be unhappy with anything, ever.
You don't understand, or don't agree with the complaints. Those are two different things, and I suspect you understand why people are complaining and instead disagree with the complaints.
People are complaining because something was available, they adopted it, then it was discontinued. Apparently with little warning, and after they'd been encouraged to adopt it by the provider of the images.
As it happens, I agree with the general idea that if folks are not paying for the convenience of builds, then it's on them to work from source. However, it's better IMO if a vendor or project start from that position rather than what's seen as a rug-pull.
Of course, it's part of the playbook: when something is new and not widely adopted, the vendor goes to great effort to encourage adoption -- then the vendor starts looking at the paid vs. free usage and sees "huh, we have a 10000:1 ratio of paid to free users, including ten megacorps that show up grabbing binaries every 10 minutes for their CI/CD farm, and asking questions in our forums, but aren't paying a penny toward development and our investors are getting pissy."
It's legit. Just gives people the impression that it is sabotaging the community. I understand why they do it (the more inconvenience the more likely people are gonna pay), but wish companies are more thoughtful on open sourcing code and how to differentiate enterprise offerings at the beginning, rather than playing tricks after gaining tractions.
They are entitled to stop building docker images. Their users are entitled to get salty and go find alternative products.
If that is Minio’s expectation, then all is good, but it seems kinda counterproductive? I never liked minio, but I certainly wouldn’t use it after seeing them remove features.
They removed the admin UI from the web frontend in the f/oss version some months ago, too. I updated for security reasons and they'd stripped the functionality out. It's a jerk move.
MinIO is open source cosplay.
I wrote this back in July: https://sneak.berlin/20250720/minio-are-assholes/
>I certainly wouldn’t use it after seeing them remove features.
All sorts of projects remove features all the time though, even the linux kernel drops support for hardware that may or may not be in use somewhere
>Their users are entitled to get salty and go find alternative products.
People are entitled to feeling things of course, others will only point out that it may not be justified and that the user is liable to get hurt again if they never adjust their expectations to meet reality
Certainly, there are some pretty entitled people on that github issue.
But this attitude is too far the other way. Fair enough, you are under no obligation to continue providing a free service. But isn't it fair to give a bit of notice before withdrawing it? Especially after doing it so consistently for so long. Not legally required, sure, but polite.
They haven't even given notice after withdrawing it! They just waited for someone to realise and ask about it.
Bear in mind that many paid for services, on a subscription basis, technically allow the seller to change (i.e. reduce!) the service at any time. If they act in bad faith to their free tier, what should you expect about their paid tiers? You could argue you also shouldn't be using paid services that could behave that way but I think you'd struggle not to.
I agree with what you said, but I think “courteous” might be a better word than “fair”. Whatever word you use, I take it as a sign that unpaid use isn’t as welcome as I thought.
Company makes Open Source. Open Source community enbraces it, helps it to become the defacto standard.
Company does a rug pull because they are unable to make a proper business out of it and leaves the community hanging dry.
Removing the container image build step, which was ALREADY THERE, and doing this internaly only, is the gatekeeping they are now doing.
Its like 0 effort to provide these images.
And yes pricing pages like this is always the same: You don't get any deal below 1k / month minimum because they have some pre-sales people and a payment pipeline which doesn't work for anything small or startup like.
Somehow i don't get MinIO anyway. They got over 100 Million of investment for an S3 system. Its basically a done product. Its also a typical 'invest once build it once, keep it running' thing which can easily be replicated with a little bit of investment from other companies.
I have no clue how they ever got valued over 100 Million.
> Its like 0 effort to provide these images.
I love it when entitled folks both expect to use someone else's work AND immediately downplay someone else's effort (no, I am not affiliated with Min.IO, just saying if you are scared of building a docker image yourself, maybe you should not downplay someone else's effort).
I'm not scared at all and could care less about building the image myself.
I'm also not 'entitled' because i'm doing this for another open source project we are now maintaining.
Just to be clear: THEY already have to maintain the docker image and it makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company building it for them or everyone has to build it themselves because they do not trust random companies.
There is a difference between having the official Min.IO image with a stamp of approval vs. forked repos with their version of the same image. The only thing fixing this kind of issue is a fingerprint and build caches.
They are removing the official container images because 1. this is the magic source of running your software in helm charts etc. so now you need to act 2. in some companies you are not allowed to use random container images
And you are complelty ignoring my arguments. Its not entitlement if a companies product becomes the industry standard due to Open Source and then doing a rug pull like this.
> Just to be clear: THEY already have to maintain the docker image and it makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company building it for them or everyone has to build it themselves because they do not trust random companies.
Wrong - it would be less secure if they did not share the source code and the Dockerfile along that too. As long as you take care to regularly update, where is the problem?
So just to be clear, they publish the docker image, they have an Github action which is basically free for them to build and release it into a free registry but they don't do it.
So i setup everything to do this on my github with their code and publish it on my package.
And you don't think this is stupid?
The problem is the critisim how they act and even if they release everything and its just building the image, you can't trust another source to upload the image someone else has build with this file. So now everyone has to build the same image.
> makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company
Correct, and that's the most worrying aspect.
> I don't understand what people are complaining about
Talk is cheap. People will complain about something they’re not legally entitled to because there’s no downside, only an upside if the company backtracks.
In the background they are probably creating tickets to mitigate the risk if the complaining doesn’t work. It’s perfectly rational.
I don’t understand the people who don’t understand this.
Well removing any distribution after a CVE is a nice touch ...
"It's an Open Source project - I don't understand what people are complaining about. Noone is entitled to receive free Docker images. "
While this is true, in all of these discussions, somewhere the notion of responsibility often gets lost.
If you publish a project, encourage people to use it, promote it heavily, etc, then get lots of users, and then decide to kill it, while it's true you legally owe nobody anything, it's sort of crazy to claim people are acting entitled when they complain.
After all, you encouraged people to use it and promoted it!
Again, do you legally owe them anything? Nope.
I am much more empathetic towards those who get surprised by the growth of their projects, or otherwise didn't try to make their project popular and decide to quit when it becomes too large too quickly and becomes a burden.
In general, if you try to encourage lots of people to use or do something and succeed at that, you end up with various forms of social responsibility to those people. That's true in most things, not just open source.
Open source does not get a pass at this social reality simply because, as a legal reality, those users are not owed anything.
Exactly. looked up their github to see what the big issue was about and they still provide the full source + the Dockerfile. It's not a huge issue that it is being made into. Does no-one know how to build a Docker image any more?
But a properly built image is a nice part of a product release.
Building a quality production ready image is not trivial, and it's always welcomed from the vendor.
Back in July I clarified precisely what people are complaining about. It should clear up the matter.
https://sneak.berlin/20250720/minio-are-assholes/
Uh this is a superficial take. It almost certainly took more effort to hide the images from the public than to publish them.
The community that made them is being shit on.
Or one can just use old images. Which is what many people started doing after their other fuckup - removing perfectly working web UI from free version.
They just can't stop shooting themselves in the foot that didn't even heal from last time.
The last tag with a working web UI is RELEASE.2025-04-22T22-12-26Z btw.
Terrible advice when a CVE is being discussed.
Keep in mind this is the same project that removed all useful functionality from the included web UI in the community edition with the excuse that it was too much effort to maintain.
This is another case of VC-funded companies pulling up the ladder behind themselves.
Is it an excuse? Maintaining code costs money, and the previous versions are provided under the license, and you're free to modify it, pull selective patches and maintain them yourself. While It'd be convenient if the license was a promise to develop and maintain features for free in perpetuity, it just isn't.
I run into this in non-company backed open source projects all the time too. Some maintainer gets burned out or non-interested and all they're rewarded is people with pitchforks because they thought there were some sort of obligations to provide free updates and suppport
It is sort of an excuse. I don't use MinIO precisely because of this kind of behaviour - if I cannot easily develop, configure and test our applications, I'm not adopting it commercially, specially when there are a ton of options to choose from. In the end, this hurts the MinIO's enterprise offering. Having a robust, easy to deploy community edition, with predictable features, is a great way of allowing integrators to develop and test using your product, and to help the product to gain traction.
It's different as a) they did offer it for free and b) have to maintain it for the closed version.
However, this is also a classic move, so shouldn't be unexpected behavior these days...
Conversely, if instead of making your users happy to pay you, you've made them happy to use your stuff for free, you own the consequences when you stop giving that stuff away.
Welcome to HN BTW, I see you were inspired to sign up and defend the project owner.
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I understand the frustration; however using anything VC-funded, you are not paying for, is pretty risky.
It's still risky if you pay unless you have a contract guaranteeing what the renewal price would be.
It would be useful to have some kind of future feasibility risk analysis service for open third party dependencies.
Something that can be plugged into CI.
Perhaps something like this already exists?
The title of the HN submission might look a bit misleading. It's easy to misinterpret it and think MinIO stops being open source (which would be a bigger deal IMHO).
I think this would be better: "MinIO stops distributing free Docker images"
---
See also the relevant README section: https://github.com/minio/minio?tab=readme-ov-file#source-onl...
For those left wondering what the original title was, it said minio went source-only.
I don't see the problem in either case. For a Gentoo user, it changes nothing.
OK, we updated the title to your suggested one now.
What was the previous title?
It was: MinIO (apparently) becomes source-only
Thanks tomhow!
That was my interpretation of the title when I first clicked it. Still interesting but easy to misunderstand nevertheless.
We [0] use MinIO with for our clients so we've just thrown together a nightly build process. Use/fork as you wish:
https://github.com/golithus/minio-builds
Example use:
[0]: https://lithus.euIf anyone is wondering, the Dockerfile for this repo (thanks for sharing!) basically just copies the binary in, it is a 19 line dockerfile.
I see both sides of the argument here, the people maintaining minio should not have to push docker images for free, it is work to maintain and test, especially across all the host platforms. And, this work isn't that complicated if you want to do it yourself.
https://github.com/golithus/minio-builds/blob/main/Dockerfil...
No problem!
And it is very true. Although the binary does also need building, which is also handled in the above actions workflow.
>I see both sides of the argument here, the people maintaining minio should not have to push docker images for free, it is work to maintain and test, especially across all the host platforms. And, this work isn't that complicated if you want to do it yourself
I don't. It's automated, it needs approximately zero attention. This is just a company that got where it was benefitting from open source taking the free toys away thinking there'll be profit in it.
Not a full replacement but there is Garage, which was quite well received in other HN threads.
https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage
Can vouch for it as an adequate self-hostable option. It has some missing features, compared to Minio, and is less compatible but works for most applications.
could you elaborate on this? we're looking at moving off cloudflare r2 in the somewhat near future and garage is on our short-list
Garage worked for most of my use-cases but it lacks, among other endpoints[0], bucket ACLs and bucket replication. Anonymous access is also an open issue[1].
They are also a comparatively young project and while fully OSS do not, afaik, appear to have a solid long term funding source yet. Though that might be an opportunity to support them, if your company is interested in picking them.
[0]: https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/documentation/reference-manua...
[1]: https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage/issues/263
I find garage to require quite a lot of fiddling.
Care to elaborate?
Afaik Ceph has its own object-storage functionality as well, which seems to be S3-compatible: https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/radosgw/#object-gateway
Yeah. They also created a open source test suite for S3 clones.
https://github.com/ceph/s3-testsI believe you're forced to have your data backed by a Ceph OSD. Whereas Minio can point to an NFS share on a NAS.
Minio used to be able to do this, but they dropped this feature - "gateway mode" - several years ago.
> I believe you're forced to have your data backed by a Ceph OSD.
It makes perfect sense as this is a feature of Ceph.
> Whereas Minio can point to an NFS share on a NAS.
Eh, different trade-offs.
Doesn't support if-match.
I think both sides of this argument are correct:
1. MinIO is a business and they don't owe anything to anyone for free. 2. People using the OSS version also are free to express their dissatisfaction.
This is not contract law though. This is about using OSS as a marketing gimmick to get mindshare, penetrate the market and then do a bait and switch.
From one hand, it is within their right to do whatever they want as marketing. From the other hand, we as the community should be more aware of OSS as marketing vs OSS as we would like to see it.
There is a damage to the community however: this erodes trust in OSS companies, so just like "content marketing" or "influencers" or any other type of marketing, after a while it loses its effectiveness, to the detriment of real "content", real "influence" and real "OSS".
I agree with all the points you make. Just adding a detail to the following bit:
> 1. MinIO is a business and they don't owe anything to anyone for free.
I don't think MinIO discontinuing the free docker image is really the problem here. Creating and distributing such images cost them practically nothing - either in infrastructure costs or in HR costs. If they find it that difficult, they only need to say it. Either the community or another company will gladly take it up for free. Even other cloud projects have alternative distributions like Bitnami builds.
The real issue is the pattern of behavior that this move exposes. They seem to have removed the web UI from the community edition claiming that it's hard to maintain (another thing the community would have gladly taken up if they were informed). They also stopped updating the community documentation. And these largely escaped attention until the docker build was discontinued. That itself is controversial since much effort wasn't spent in letting the users know that their current image was going to suffer bitrot indefinitely. Apparently there was also a CVE which was fixed in the source. They didn't consider it necessary to at least push the fixed container as a final measure.
All these are certainly hostile and unkind towards the community and it's bordering on dishonesty. They didn't lie. But neither did they do the bare minimum expected when taking such a drastic measure. It's clear that they're withdrawing their generosity for more profits after gaining a lot of mindshare with their earlier offering. I don't believe that the docker image alone would have inflamed the community so much.
We're working on a binary build process now. We hope to have something up at https://github.com/golithus soon.
We use MinIO (community edition) a fair amount. And while we like it, it is also becoming increasingly clear that our days of deploying are numbered.
We want to start experimenting with Garage for smaller deployments, and would be interesting to hear of any production experiences there. (Anyone done multi-PiB deployments?)
Other than that we're going to start looking at Ceph/Rook for larger deployments.
Done: https://github.com/golithus/minio-builds
garage devs have told me of 10PiB+ deployments in production, but I've never operated one at that scale so I can't share much insight into the experience. Probably best to ask on their matrix chat.
It's absolutely stunning that people actually defend this behaviour!
The community is having an outrage - and rightfully so - about a silently discontinued artifact delivery at a very critical time. Which is their opinion and every human being is entitled to have their own opinion and state it openly.
It is also perfectly fine to expect a standardised behaviour to continue.
However, what is most important is that is perfectly fine to shame an open source product for pulling features and money grabbing people after years of gathering community and locking them in.
I don't understand the point. The entire raison d'être of this project is that you self-host it and don't pay money for S3 and control your supply chain.
If you are denied this possibility — it is much easier just to use S3.
I don't think the people in this thread have any concept of how much $$$ it costs to distribute a free container that is going to be downloaded billions of times.
You are a farmer, not a big fancy profitable one. Your tractor is from 1970 and works great, when it works. Your wife has health problems and can't really help out around the farm much - kids have gone off - so you just do things mostly by yourself. With your lucky dog Skip by your side. Even though times are tough and money ain't coming in like it used to - you still give free produce to the local schools and shelters. You've been doing it for over 20 years, and the community loves you for it.
But then your wife passes. Medical bills are too high. You can't give away free produce to the local schools anymore.
The community is outraged. They come to your farm with pitchforks. They set your barn and fields on fire.
This is kinda what this thread feels like lol.
Looking at the change to the README last week[1], it looks like MinIO went from "MinIO has no planned or scheduled releases for this repository" and " While a new release may be cut at any time, there is no timeline for when a subsequent release may occur." to "The MinIO community edition is now distributed as source code only".
Based on promises alone, I think that means they un-dropped the open source project but still only distribute the binaries to their customers.
[1]: https://github.com/minio/minio/commit/9e49d5e7a648f00e26f224...
Quite a downward spiral for them. Wow. I mean I get the yearning for turning a profit, but this is yikes. This is the type of thing that guarantees most people using your open source / free variant never return.
I haven't used minio in years, and when I did I only fiddled around with it, but my recollection of it is that it's about the simplest build chain imaginable. Install modern golang, build minio, get single binary.
Anyone relying on an opensource tool like minio, needs to look at:
Once you've looked at that you can decide "is this an anchor I want to handcuff myself to and hope the anchor won't jump into the icy blue deep taking me and my dreams with it?"If the org behind it ever decides to rugpull/elastic you, what're you gonna do? At least with something like minio, if they're still distributing the source it's trivial to build (and if you can't build it you should evaluate if you're in a position to rely on it).
Let's look at other cool open source things like SigNoz which distribute only docker artifacts (as far as I remember, anyhow) -- if they were to rugpull that people relying on it would be totally lost at sea.
This isn't to say that this isn't poor behavior on minio's part, but I feel like they've been signaling us for a while that they're looking to repay their VC patrons.
> If the org behind it ever decides to rugpull/elastic you
I love it that you use "elastic" as a verb here.
Time to switch to Garage for dev environments and reconsider minio for prod. This is not how to do open source.
I am also so confused as to what MinIO is now. All I see on the website is AIStor - have they dropped the "S3 Alternative" Marketing and went full AI?
If you want VC funding, your marketing pages need to go all-in on AI. Even if your product has nothing to do with it.
I wonder how many people only use Minio as a localdev S3 alternative.
At least that's all we use it for really
I have a 160TB minio cluster running for 4+ years who had dealt beautifully with node outages, one drive failure and the occassional hiccups on the datacenter.
I was okay with not having support because I am not part of their customer base. I was okay with not having the webUI, though I wish they made an option where the webUI would be available for some basic-tier paid customers. But I can not be okay with this move. They are just giving the finger to all the community. They never tried to work out a solution that could let smaller users to contribute or support.
I will seriously have to consider moving to Hetzner object storage.
What is the problem exactly you are facing now?
Right now, my problem is that I can not update my minio cluster because I do not know of any trustworthy docker image that I can use, and the version I am on is exposed to (at least) one known CVE.
Yeah CI tests and local dev environments for code that runs against S3 in prod. Right now sifting through the alternatives for whatever is easiest to run as a container in Github actions or docker-compose...
Every time I used it for more than that I ran into performance and other concerns (like durability and consistency) pretty quickly. I cannot imagine how this is used seriously when there is something like Ceph available.
Turns out most file systems are horrible key-value stores.
>I cannot imagine how this is used seriously when there is something like Ceph available.
Adopting Ceph is adopting a Ceph engineer, any use-case with the need and funding to run Ceph on production would easily be able to pay for commercial licenses and/or contribute majorly to this or their own fork. They work in different ball-parks entirely
I use it to test my tiny written-from-scratch S3 client in my server app. But then I already have it installed, it already works, and I don't care about updates.
That's how I use it. It seems to also provide a lot of other stuff I don't use.
I'm glad to have migrated to garage in time. This is quite unfortunate though as a lot of open source projects, like plane.so, used minio via container images for s3 with docker compose.
thoughts on https://github.com/coollabsio/minio ?
I feel like this could be used till the time plane.so or other projects feel like they could migrate to garage or maybe just use these coollabsio minio docker image?
My problem was mostly that MinIO was not significantly better for my use-case then garage after the admin console was yanked. Thank you for the pointer though, I will take a look at this for my plane.so instance (using a private containerized minio there still).
What did you lose exactly, I don't get it.
Minions has taken away the admin UI for everything except a bucket browser in one of the last releases.
And now they have stopped publishing updates to their community edition docker images. As the linked GitHub issue points out this now means at least one vulnerability will be unpatched (unless you install from source or switch the image) for anyone relying on updates to the original container image.
My loss exactly was that minio lost most of its appeal when it stopped having an integrated management console. It also seemed they were moving into a direction where features were gonna be more separated off for their aistore products over the community edition (a fair move but not something I want to happen to my deployment).
Just use Garage. https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage
A developer not offering builds themself is a common thing in package managers, like apt or pacman. I don't get why it should be any different for Docker images.
https://github.com/coollabsio/minio
I was reading the github discussion and found out that coollabs has taken on the decision to make docker images for these.
https://github.com/coollabsio/minio
https://github.com/minio/minio/issues/21647#issuecomment-342...
>Until we (the community) figure out something, I made an automated docker image version here: https://github.com/coollabsio/minio
The latest release is already available on ghcr and on dockerhub for amd and arm.
Well they have locked the discussion right now it seems but hope the community does something since my brother once asked for how to store audio and I thought that something like S3 could be perfect for it and wanted him to use minio or check it out.
Idk what I will recommend now? Garage? Seaweedfs?
Wow, ~75 lines of Dockerfile and ~300 lines of github actions, hosted on a FREE platform.
Seriously, what is the rage here, anyone could do this.
I hope you have read the github issue page
This was the first person after so so many comments to actually do something about it, and he's from coolify which can be decently trusted with.
Everybody likes to rant and the dislikes on github issues show but I just respect the guy for even taking his time to write this.
Sure you can try to reduce it to LOC or anyone can do this, but did you?
Also there is a trust factor, I can trust coolify's docker image as compared to any other people.
Anyone including MinIO. So why did they stop doing it when it was so easy?
Especially because they haven't provided any reasoning for this decision, so everyone assumes the worst. I can't really think of any reason for this that puts them in a positive light either, can you?
This reminds me about the bitnami containers. They pulled the docker images so everyone migrated away because they fear they will also pull the artifacts building the project. They never said that. They seem to be continuing to updating the projects and providing access to the artifacts. It is very easy to build the dockers... it is just a dockerfile really... There is really no upside to stop updating the projects, it is free marketing...
Lots of people in this thread keep repeating the idea that, "Nobody owes anybody anything".
Sure, just like nobody owes minio goodwill or business. People sour on these kinds of things because they feel sneaky and backhanded. It tells you something about the kind of people you're working with.
Imagine if a food kitchen suddenly started charging for the food, without notice. Or they started charging to use changing rooms in clothing stores. Etc, etc. You'd, rightly, expect a negative reaction, even if the "food kitchen doesn't owe anybody anything".
The biggest misstep in these situations is the corporations avoiding being honest and communicative about why the changes are suddenly necessary. We all know, intuitively, that in most cases its because it's not for a good reason. It's because they are greedy or otherwise feel pressured to show infinite growth.
I don't see the problem here in theory - if I want to trust something fully I'll build it myself in my own pipeline, often with additional hardening as needed. It only needs scripting out the build process to fit alongside my other code. I even do this for Linux apps like Signal because I want a clean binary that matches the Git tag, packaged exactly right for my system, built with the libraries already in place locally.
What's not cool is not pushing a fresh Docker image to secure the CVE, leaving anyone using Docker hanging. Regardless of the new policy, they should have followed through and made the fix public on all distribution channels. Leaving a known unsafe version as the last release is irresponsible.
> Leaving a known unsafe version as the last release is irresponsible.
I think they should have done a better job of announcing this ahead of time (or at all, really); but there's realistically never going to be a CVE-free release to stop on, because the next CVE is just around the corner.
minio is guilty of a lot worse sins than pulling a docker image -- hate them for those, not because it's more inconvenient to run.
I've been testing the RustFS product for over a month now. While there are some minor bugs, Rust is very stable.
Why didn't YC invest in such a great product?
While not notifying of the change earlier is annoying, I also don't see anywhere stated that they're obligated to provide services in addition to just providing me the source. Moreover the build-instructions don't seem complicated at all, anyone already extracting value from this should be capable of pulling the source and keep on running with it.
I regret recommending using at in our team.
This move can’t be anything else other than malicious.
I think Minio is the only Go client for S3 API and S3-compatible APIs. I cannot say I liked using it, but I had no choice. Nowadays I run my own file storage with my own API, so I no longer care.
But if anyone wants to run their own file storage(so not a client), there is https://github.com/seaweedfs/seaweedfs
I've used the minio-go client library for about a year now. I don't see anything in the minio-go README or elsewhere to make me think it will no longer be supported. In fact, the most recently merged PR was yesterday. There are some other Go S3 clients, like https://github.com/kelindar/s3, but I don't know if any other Go S3 clients have the complete set of features that minio-go has.
Full disclosure: I work for Cloudian.
While I understand the frustration with MinIO’s approach here, I want to be upfront about what Cloudian HyperStore is and isn’t - it is designed for multi-node, multi-site deployments (think 3+ nodes minimum) and performs best on bare metal or dedicated infrastructure rather than containerized environments.
It’s a very mature S3 and offers IAM, SQS and STS endpoints as well.
If you’re running MinIO at scale in production and looking at migration options, I’m happy to connect you with our team who can discuss whether HyperStore makes sense for your use case. That said, for single-node dev environments or lightweight deployments that many here are using MinIO for, the community alternatives mentioned in this thread are probably better fits. Different tools for different scales. Happy to answer any technical questions about HyperStore’s architecture if helpful.
What is Cloudian? You guys didn't develop Minio did you? (Google says Minio Inc?) If you did it's hard to tell.
No, Cloudian did not develop MinIO - completely separate companies. MinIO was developed by MinIO Inc. Cloudian makes HyperStore, which is our own S3-compatible object storage solution. We’re a competitor to MinIO, not affiliated with them in any way.
Ah I see. Will check yours out.
#ad
Getting it from source is as easy as `go install github.com/minio/minio@latest` if you have a recent Go.
In addition your favorite Linux distribution probably has it as from-source builds already.
For a container image you could try making one from Alpine or Wolfi.
this sucks because now im forced to make seaweedfs and ceph work haha
seriously, minio sucks perf wise but they really did a good job making it easy to deploy with docker
Item 15 of the license states:
They have no obligations to provide documentation, binaries or anything beyond the source code.I personally think this is a better option than migrating from an open source license to a source available and I would like more project adopt this approach from the beginning of their projects, to set people's expectation right.
Which would be very relevant if anyone were trying to sue them for this - which no one is.
The license establishes the limits of legal requirements and responsibilities. It doesn't shield you from criticisms and people being annoyed with you.
Render also pushes MinIO as their recommended equivalent to S3 for their customers (using docker), similar to Bucketeer on Heroku.
https://render.com/docs/deploy-minio
Hopefully this will finally push Render to build their own S3 wrapper.
MinIO was already before tricky because their interpretation of the AGPL is way to broad.
I like the GPL it has given us a lot.
I am guessing here but I do understand why they want people to open source the management code of minio and in some cases how it is integrated into a product. I understand that AGPL might not be written for these requirements but I think it is time for a new such license.
If it is part of a SaaS product that is sold I can definitely understand why this is important.
Do you have a link? I want to read more about that. Did they interpret any use as deriving from minio?
They changed their public guidance at this point, but you can still find references to their approach to AGPL quoted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35328316
> "When MinIO is linked to a larger software stack in any form, including statically, dynamically, pipes, or containerized and invoked remotely, the AGPL v3 applies to your use. What triggers the AGPL v3 obligations is the exchanging data between the larger stack and MinIO."
Yes, the page at https://www.min.io/opensource no longer contains this phrase. It sounds reasonable now. I guess they talked to a lawyer.
Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20230327211209/https://min.io/co...
Did they ever get permissions from their contributors to switch to AGPL? Last I checked they did not. They didn't require a CLA either.
So no matter what they claim large parts of the codebase are still apache2.
It wouldn't matter anyways, you cannot relicense historic releases.
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Recently adopted the Go MinIO SDK to abstract cloud-specific APIs. Really hoping the SDKs don't get a licensing change or yanked next
there's still gocloud.dev/blob ...
Just make a fork and release built images via github actions with ghcr. Then ask people to switch to it.
The great thing about open src is the ability to walk away. removed features in new release? fork and put it back. quit complaining and be the change the world needs you to be
https://github.com/coollabsio/minio
Can't emphasize on it enough but I trust the coolify team enough. Lets all jump to this ig
There are people who are being the change they want to see, thanks coolify team.
back in the day, I had an automated Github action that would pull and build a polyfill.io image every time there was a tagged release
You don't even need to fork the project, you can just extend / distribute
garage and for the minio gateway (RIP) i use versitygw
Have been looking for minio alternative for long already. Found versitygw lately and would like to share the joy. It feels very promising. Fits to many small or lab use cases.
It does not actually solve the trickiness of managing large storage but relies on the backend (that is usually fs like zfs in small setups).
However, seems to be quite new project plus the risk, that the owning company takes it to bad direction, is there too.
https://github.com/versity/versitygw/
Just run `docker build` yourself. Why does this non-issue spawn dozens of comments? This isn't some impossible-to-build Windows C++ project.
More projects should do this.
Reasonable.
That seems to be the key word.
One camp argues: Expect nothing. Move on.
The other: Could they - with very little effort (reasonable) - have choosen a more palatable route.
There must be a middle ground between the nihilists and the pampered.
Is there a fork already?
Do we need a fork? As an example, ffmpeg is source only for mac and windows, which just means someone else is building and distributing binaries.
They changed their license to AGPL, removed features (Web UI, etc.) and now they don't provide docker images/binaries. It's their project but; what's next?
> what's next?
Removing existing Docker images? Seems unlikely.
What for? The code hasn't changed, it's AGPL-3.0. They just don't release their own binaries or docker images anymore.
There is perhaps a need for a fork because of their recent removal of features (unrelated to today's post): https://github.com/minio/minio/issues/21584
Demanding people do free work for you, like starting a fork on your expedited schedule is quite juvenile.
Forks take time and effort from humans to maintain.
Where did you see a demand? The comment you're replying to merely asked if there is a fork.
The inclusion of the word “already” suggests that someone should have put forth effort to fork this project by now.
That’s where I interpreted this as a demand.
I took it at face value - “has someone already put for the effort?”. You know, assume positive intent and all that.
not sure that word means what you think it means
I built my own S3-less Minio alternative few weeks ago, should I open source it?
It's built using Rust and React Router.
Just playing around with it
Why? The maintainer in the link chooses to be a dick and refuses to explain literally any of the weird decisions they've been making. That would at least help people understand?
It's ok, just don't use them anymore if you don't like it. I will switch to something else.
Just build your damn image if you need it.
They don’t owe you anything.
Shame. Textbook OSS rug pull. These people love to rely on OSS, and claim how committed they are to contribute to the ecosystem and to their community, but as soon as people are drawn to the project, start relying on it and using it in the same spirit of OSS that they enjoy themselves (which their chosen license allows, mind you), then it becomes a financial burden, priorities shift to their commercial offering, there's no "bandwidth" to maintain and support the "community" edition, and so on.
STOP ABUSING OSS AS A MARKETING GIMMICK.
Or perhaps an advice to people who might actually listen: stop being attracted to open source projects because of the word "open", and because you can use it gratis. There are plenty of good proprietary and commercial software whose authors treat their users with more respect than these leeches of good will and abusers of trust.
I'm not against OSS being commercialized. In fact, I think that it's crucial for maintaining a healthy project in the long-term[1][2]. But this lingers on the developer having respect and equal regard for all their users, regardless of how much they're paying them. Yes, nobody working on software should be expected to work for free. But there is a philosophy behind this movement that goes beyond a financial transaction. It only works if everyone in the ecosystem is honest, and first and foremost has the intention of making the world a better place for everyone, by not only depending on others who have this mindset, but by adopting it themselves. Claiming to be part of the OSS community, but being hostile to your OSS users is dishonest at best, and worthy of all criticism.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45540307
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45537750
>It only works if everyone in the ecosystem is honest
In general, applying this to anything with the general public, I don't expect it to work. This is why we have laws, licenses and rules in the first place. You can preach all you want but it won't change humanity, you need something concrete, something written and agreed, like a license.
Not all licenses protect the freedoms and rights you're used to in other licenses, and it needs to be taken into account when adopting any project. License terms that don't guarantee any sort of support or updates when you need them aren't in consideration at that point.
If you don't trust people, then OSS is not for you.
You can't claim to provide software as a public good, while also gatekeeping it only for specific groups of people. If you want to do that, then choose a restrictive license, with the exact terms of use you're comfortable with, and don't work in the open to begin with. That is a valid strategy if your main priority is getting paid.
My objection is towards people who use OSS licenses, but then take issue when others actually use the freedoms they've granted, and proceed to enshittify the project by removing features, putting them up behind a paywall, and in general being hostile and ignoring the user base they've gained in large part thanks to OSS. This is using OSS as a marketing tactic, which undermines the whole point of open source and the free software movement.
Isn't your diatribe contradictory. Your last paragraph appears to contradict your 'beliefs'.
lmao
they dont learn anything after redis case are they????
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What did MinIO say to Wordpress? "hold my beer"
I never understood Minio. Why not just use S3? Why not just use Ceph?
If you need just the interface for dev environment, I am sure Claude can cobble it together in 1 day.
This seems like a maneuver of a dying company.