This technical blog article analyzes the MinIO open-source software project's licensing changes and technical evolution. The content engages mildly with human rights themes related to information sharing (Article 19), creative work (Article 23), education (Article 26), and cultural participation (Article 27) through its discussion of open-source principles. The overall evaluation is neutral, with most UDHR articles not engaged by this technical software analysis.
I am wondering if Minio Inc has rewritten the software in a clean room. Otherwise wouldn't they need to publish the source anyways? Since it is AGPL anyone might potentially be interacting with the software. Do they do that?
It's nice that people are taking this up, and one of the main benefits of open source in the first place. I have my doubts that this will succeed if it's just one guy, but maybe it takes on new life this way and I would never discourage people from trying to add value to this world.
That said I increasingly have a very strong distaste of these AI generated articles. They are long and tedious to read and it really makes me doubt that what is written there is actually true at all. I much prefer a worse written but to the point article.
Seems like a very balanced take on forking Minio. I don't have high hopes for the future Minio, but as mentioned it is more or less feature complete, good enough for most use-cases.
I was searching for a fairly simple replacement for s3 for testing. I'd been using Minio for a while now, and simply ended up implementing my own on top of Postgres. Fun intersection given the post. (Note, I know it isn't optimal, but as I always have Postgres available it fits well, and I don't have high storage needs, just the api compatibility)
There are 3 new commits, and the only actually fixes are: Go update and revert to earlier version of console.
But there are a bunch of changes to docs, CI workflows and issue templates. Which is what is the easy part of managing a fork, and I've seen a bunch of forks that ended up only updating readme-s, CI, etc.
I'll have more faith in the fork when the maintainers do actual fixes.
Wish the effort well. I has plans to self host s3 with minio that took some time to actually get around to and when I did they had done the enterprise rug pull. I do think one maintainer may be able to pull it off with AI assistance if the scope is limited to security bug fixes. Minio is one of the nastiest rug pulls I can think of.
It’s nice to see people taking this on, but for a project like this I’d prefer to wait and see if the maintenance continues.
This blog post is extremely heavy on LLM written content, which isn’t a promising early sign
> Normally this is where the story ends — a collective sigh, and everyone moves on.
> But I want to tell a different story. Not an obituary — a resurrection.
I’ve seen several announcements of forked open source projects from people who thought that maintaining a fork is easy now that they can have an LLM do all the work. Then their interest trails off when they encounter problems the AI can’t handle for them or the community tires of doing all of the testing and code review for a maintainer who just wants to prompt the LLM and put their name on the project. When someone can’t even write their own announcement without an LLM it’s not an encouraging sign.
I'll plug that Chainguard has been maintaining a fork for awhile and seems to have a history with supporting forks like this: https://github.com/chainguard-forks/minio
I switched to rustfs this week though and am not looking back. I'd recommend it to others as well for small scale usage. Its maturing rapidly and seems promising.
> MinIO as an S3-compatible object store is already feature-complete. It’s finished software.
I don't see how these two lines can be written together.
The goal is either to remain S3-compatible or to freeze the current interface of the service forever.
As it stands this fork's compatibility with S3, and with the official MinIO itself, will break as soon as one of them pushes an API update. Which works fine for existing users, maybe, but over time as the projects drift further apart no new ones will be able to onboard.
I never understood why one would use MinIO over Ceph for serious (multi-node) use. Sure, it might be easier to setup initially, but Ceph would be more likely to work.
For the single node use-case, I'm working on https://github.com/uroni/hs5 . The S3 API surface is large, but at this point it covers the basics. By limiting the goals I hope it will be maintainable.
> A company that raised $126M at a billion-dollar valuation spent five years methodically dismantling the open-source ecosystem it built.
Sounds like Puppet's story. $180M raised, ~$1B valuation ca. 2019, sold to Perforce in 2022, public repo taken private and builds commercialized by Perforce in 2024, community fork shipped early 2025.
• This is translated from my original Chinese post. I used Claude to polish the English — not a native speaker. Fair criticism on the LLM-ese; I'll tighten it.
• This fork exists because MinIO is a production dep in my PG distribution (Pigsty) and I needed working binaries + CVE patches. It's primarily for my own use; sharing it because others may have the same problem.
• We're deliberately conservative — no new features, just a drop-in replacement that behaves like the last OSS release with the console restored. Early commits will look thin.
I really really don’t like how the author spins AGPL relicensing and enforcement as an indication of project dying. AGPL is a perfectly fine license [1] for FOSS projects, and enforcing the license is a prerequisite of a healthy project. I get what he’s trying to say, but putting it all in the same category as cutting features and winding down in general feels... wrong. Trying to save a project should not be called “dying”.
That said, congrats on resurrecting it!
[1]: The fact that big tech doesn’t want to touch it is on the big tech, not on the license!
- Code written by the Minio team, which they have full ownership of and can relicense as they wish
- Code written by third party contributors, where Minio required the contributors to provide Minio a BSD license to use the contributions but only published it to other people under AGPL.
So the AGPL doesn't bind Minio themselves because of their licensing policy. (Which is why while pure AGPL might be the open source maximalist license, AGPL + CLA is almost at the opposite end of the scale)
Although, to be fair, getting too aggressive off the bat would be concerning. A clean fork that is bit for bit compatible with the last open source version is definitely an attractive proposition from a software supply chain perspective.
I agree completely. I know everyone is tired of AI accusations but this article has all of the telltale signs of LLM writing over and over again.
It’s not encouraging for the future of a project when the maintainer can’t even announce it without having AI do the work.
It would be great if this turns into a high effort, carefully maintained fork. At the moment I’m highly skeptical of new forks from maintainers who are keen on using a lot of AI.
The S3 API is quite stable and most new features are opt-in (e.g. ApplyIfModified) or auxiliary (e.g. S3Tables). It’s highly unlikely that S3 proper will break backwards compatibility for clients with any future API change. So if all you need is basic object storage that works with existing S3 clients, then MinIO is enough. The fork just needs to keep CVEs patched and maintain community hygiene (accept new PRs for small bug fixes, etc.). And as the author points out, this is much easier in the age of AI than it might have been previously.
Moved to Garage, it's actually pretty easy to run and use.
Would be even nicer if the official Docker image would support initializing a default bucket and access key from env variables instead of having to exec into the container and follow https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/documentation/quick-start/ but that's not a dealbreaker.
Note: I only needed the single-node install, it was either this or SeaweedFS. Also used MinIO and Zenko in the past, but even the latter seems pretty much dead.
> it really makes me doubt that what is written there is actually true at all
Indeed, the whole "Ironically, switching from Apache 2.0 to AGPL irrevocably makes the project forkable" section seems misguided. Apache 2.0-licensed software is just as forkable.
> I have my doubts that this will succeed if it's just one guy
Normally, I'd agree with you 100%.
But there are some interesting mitigating circumstances here.
1) It's "just one guy" who's running a fairly complex open source project already, one which uses minio.
2) The stated intention is that the software is considered "finished" with no plans to add any features, so the maintenance burden is arguably way lower than typical open source projects (or forks)
3) they're quite open about using AI to maintain it - and like it or hate it, this "finding and helping fix bugs in complex codebases" seems to be an area where current AI is pretty good.
I'm sure a lot of people will be put off by the forker being Chinese, but honestly, from outside the US right now, it's unclear if Chinese or American software is a more existential risk.
I'll admit I'd never heard of their Pigsty project before, but a quick peek at their github shows a project that's been around for 5 years already, and has pull requests from over a dozen contributors. That's no guarantee this isn't just a better prepared Jia Tan zx utils supply chain attack, but at least it's clearly not just something that's all been created by one person over 2 or 12 months.
This statement is true of both open-source (by the OSI definition, which is a superset of free software by the FSF's definition) and free software. In fact, the fact that the original company could take their AGPL licensed software and make further updates proprietary is kind of a bug as far as the FSF is concerned (due to how copyright works and the fact that CLAs are a thing).
build af177b1+4aph · deployed 2026-03-01 06:49 UTC · evaluated 2026-03-01 16:38:53 UTC
Support HN HRCB
Each evaluation uses real API credits. HN HRCB runs on donations — no ads, no paywalls.
If you find it useful, please consider helping keep it running.