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Comment by mbreese | Hacker News Reader

The MinIO business model was a freemium model (well, Open Source + commercial support, which is slightly different). They used the free OSS version to drive demand for the commercially licensed version. It’s not like they had a free community version with users they needed to support thrust upon them — this was their plan. They weren’t volunteers.

You could argue that they got to the point where the benefit wasn’t worth the cost, but this was their business model. They would not have gotten to the point where the could have a commercial-only operation without the adoption and demand generated from the OSS version.

Running a successful OSS project is often a thankless job. Thanks for doing it. But this isn’t that.

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> Running a successful OSS project is often a thankless job. Thanks for doing it. But this isn’t that.

No, even if you are being paid, it's a thankless, painful job to deal with demanding, entitled free users. It's worse if you are not being paid, but I'm not sure why you are asserting dealing with bullshit is just peachy if you are being paid.

If that is the case why did minio start with the open source version? If there were only downsides? Sounds like stupid business plan

They wanted adoption and a funnel into their paid offering. They were looking out for their own self-interest, which is perfectly fine; however, it’s very different from the framing many are giving in this thread of a saintly company doing thankless charity work for evil homelab users.

Where did I say there were only downsides? There are definitely upsides to this business model, I'm just refuting the idea that because there are for profit motives the downsides go away.

I hate when people mistreat the people that provide services to them: doesn't matter if it's a volunteer, underpaid waitress or well paid computer programmer. The mistreatment doesn't become "ok" because the person being mistreated is paid.

I doubt that minio pulled the open source version because they were mistreated. Really yeah there are some projects where this is a problem, but it’s mostly because the project only has a single maintainer.

People are angry about minio , but that’s because of their rugpull.

The minio people did a lot of questionable things even before the rugpull. They tried to claim AGPL infects software over the network, on a previous version of https://min.io/compliance

> Combining MinIO software as part of a larger software stack triggers your GNU AGPL v3 obligations. The method of combining does not matter. 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.

> No, even if you are being paid, it's a thankless, painful job to deal with demanding, entitled free users.

So… aren't they providing (paid) support? same thing…

Absurd comparison.

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