I've been working on https://github.com/uroni/hs5 as a replacement with similar goals to early minio.
The core is stable at this point, but the user/policy management and the web interface is still in the works.
The core is stable at this point, but the user/policy management and the web interface is still in the works.
(I personally choose not to contribute to projects with CLAs, I don't want my contributions to become closed-source in the future.)
https://blog.min.io/weka-violates-minios-open-source-license...
They think they can revoke someone's AGPL license. That's not at all how that license works!
I have zero knowledge about the squabble between MinIO and Weka. I don't know, and don't care, if either of them is in the right. But if Weka isn't complying with the terms of the AGPL, then MinIO has the legal right to tell them they can no longer distribute MinIO's licensed work at all, because nothing else grants them that privilege.
If that weren't true, there'd be no teeth to the A?GPL whatsoever.
> All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met.
it also says
> You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11).
> However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.
> Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.
This is in common with the GPLv3. It is much longer than the corresponding terms of the GPLv2 to remedy a sort of fragility in the GPLv2 which says your license terminates permanently if you ever violate the GPL, even temporarily and by accident.
I have no knowledge of whether Weka did or didn't violate the license, but if they did violate it and refused to fix it, MinIO's revocation of their license is completely in accordance with the terms of the license as written. I don't think a GPL termination case has yet been litigated.
It has, though it has mainly been under the "breach of contract" approach and not under "copyright infringement" approach. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license_litigation
That said, if there was contributed AGPL code, they couldn't change the license on that part of the code w/o a CLA. AGPL also doesn't necessarily mean you have to make the code publicly available, just available to those that you give the program to (I'm assuming AGPL is like the GPL in this regard).
So, that I'd be curious about it is -- (1) is there any contributed AGPL code in the current version? (2) what license is granted to customers of the enterprise version?
Minio can completely use whatever license they want for their code. But, if there was contributed code w/o a CLA, then I'm not sure how a commercial/enterprise license would play with contriubuted AGPL code. It would be an interesting question to find out.
Additionally, in order to CHANGE the license, if others contributed code under that license, you would need their permission, on top of the fact, you cannot retroactively revoke the license for previous versions.
I can't see how this is a defensible position for Minio, but I'm not sure they really care that much at this point.
This is the crucial difference between the AGPL and the GPL: the AGPL requires you to make the code available to users for whom you run the code, as well as users you give the program to.
But, what I don't know is -- is there any other AGPL code that minio doesn't own, but that was otherwise contributed to minio? Because, presumably, they aren't actually giving their customers the minio program with an AGPL license, rather they have whatever their enterprise license agreement is. If this is the case, and there is AGPL code that's not owned by Minio, I can foresee problems in the future.
I do have a separate AGPL project (see github) where I have nearly all of the copyright and have looked into how one would be able to enforce this in the US at some point and it did look pretty bleak -- it is a civil suit where you have to show damages etc. but IANAL.
I did not like the FUD they were spreading about AGPL at the time since it is a good license for end-user applications.
What is the performance like for reads, writes, and deletes?
And just to play devil's advocate: What would you say to someone who argues that you've essentially reimplemented a filesystem?
W.r.t. filesystem: Yes, aware of this. Initially used minio and also implemented the use case directly on XFS as well and only had problems at larger scales (that still fit on a machine) with it. Ceph went into a similar direction with BlueStore (reimplementing the filesystem, but with RocksDB).
Looks like a great alternative.