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Minio Changes License to AGPL

github.com

11–20 of 150 posts

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#11
post #7

Let's say I use Minio in a SaaS app and allow my end users to upload directly to it. With this AGPL license change, is this now considered to be a form of distribution, that would then require me to open source the rest of my SaaS app?

Same question for same situation

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#12
post #7

Let's say I use Minio in a SaaS app and allow my end users to upload directly to it. With this AGPL license change, is this now considered to be a form of distribution, that would then require me to open source the rest of my SaaS app?

You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#13
post #7

Let's say I use Minio in a SaaS app and allow my end users to upload directly to it. With this AGPL license change, is this now considered to be a form of distribution, that would then require me to open source the rest of my SaaS app?

If my layman's reading of the affero license is accurate (ha!), I think it only affects you if you run minio with (your) custom modifications, in which case you would have to make the source of your custom minio fork available. It shouldn't affect the source of other services on your system.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#15
post #7

Let's say I use Minio in a SaaS app and allow my end users to upload directly to it. With this AGPL license change, is this now considered to be a form of distribution, that would then require me to open source the rest of my SaaS app?

You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host.

> You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host.

And even in that case, you only need to share your modifications of minio, not anything about the rest of your system. Doesn't seem too much of a problem, to begin with.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#16
post #5

IANAL, but this may be illegal. I noticed that they have a large number of contributors yet seem to have no contributor agreement with ownership assignment. This generally means that any license change would need the agreement of every past contributor (as it should). There are good reasons (for the primary author(s)) to enforce copyright assignment for contributions. Besides legal issues, I consider changes like thi…

The rationale for doing this escapes me. Is minio concerned about one or more cloud providers forking minio and then going closed source with their modifications? I generally only run minio from the official docker image, so I don't reckon this would affect "normal" usage?

> forking minio and then going closed source with their modifications?

Which is somewhat bizarre given that aims to MinIO emulate a closed-source system. Open source businesses usually use AGPL or similar to prevent "Big Cloud" from stealing their business, this is a very strange inverted approach and I can't figure out why.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#17

IANAL, but this may be illegal. I noticed that they have a large number of contributors yet seem to have no contributor agreement with ownership assignment. This generally means that any license change would need the agreement of every past contributor (as it should). There are good reasons (for the primary author(s)) to enforce copyright assignment for contributions. Besides legal issues, I consider changes like thi…

The AGPLv3 and Apache 2 licenses are compatible. The maintainers are welcome to relicense their own contributions under the AGPLv3 and distribute the whole subject to that license (and the Apache 2 license), but that doesn't magically make contributed source AGPL. Removing the Apache license is suspicious because there are a heap of commits that are still covered by this license and without it the core MinIO devs have no right to use it. This is a full on cluster.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#18

IANAL, but this may be illegal. I noticed that they have a large number of contributors yet seem to have no contributor agreement with ownership assignment. This generally means that any license change would need the agreement of every past contributor (as it should). There are good reasons (for the primary author(s)) to enforce copyright assignment for contributions. Besides legal issues, I consider changes like thi…

GPLv3 is compatible with Apache 2.0. This copyright statement should have addendum which indicates that portions of the code (written by contributors) are under the Apache 2.0 license. This could be addressed.

There's no pulling the rug under people here: it's not like the previous releases, under the Apache license, are rescinded. Someone can still fork the project and keep it under the Apache license.

If they are using a proprietary license for their commercial offering, they will probably require future community contributions to be donated under the Apache 2.0 license.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host.

> You only have a problem if you modify anything in the source code of minio that you host. And even in that case, you only need to share your modifications of minio, not anything about the rest of your system. Doesn't seem too much of a problem, to begin with.

That’s right.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#20

IANAL, but this may be illegal. I noticed that they have a large number of contributors yet seem to have no contributor agreement with ownership assignment. This generally means that any license change would need the agreement of every past contributor (as it should). There are good reasons (for the primary author(s)) to enforce copyright assignment for contributions. Besides legal issues, I consider changes like thi…

What's more concerning IMO is that despite the fact that I can't find a CLA, their pricing page claims that if you buy their support contract that they'll give you the software under a "Commercial" license: https://min.io/pricing
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