S3 is pretty well established and commoditized and there are alternatives.
There is literally no moat here, let alone one that would hold up for charging nearly 100 grand. Seems like a pretty bizarre play.
- Ceph
- SeaweedFS
- Garage
- CubeFS
- Apache Ozone
Do any of them fill the niche that MinIO sits in? (Relatively easy to set up and operate and with all the typical enterprise bells & whistles)
Ozone/Ceph -> Way more complicated
Among others, an inevitable torrent of forks of MinIO by people who want to keep the UI but backport any other security or architectural fixes.
Or, as the author points out and if it works for you, a 33% price increase to go to B2 from Backblaze and not have to manage your own hardware, network, infrastructure, etc.
Or, for enterprise shops, another storage appliance with an S3-compatible interface (e.g. Dell has some options)
But for those wanting other options and self-host something it's not clear cut.