Minio Changes License to AGPL

#1

Post by r3dey3 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

Minio Changes License to AGPL
github.com

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#2

Post by slaymaker1907 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

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 this to be very slimy since you are kind of pulling the rug out from under people. I would expect a huge discussion to take place before doing something like this to try and let people move off of the platform if AGPL does not work for them for whatever reason.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#3

Post by Quekid5 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:16 PM UTC

Is there a CLA or similar? Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't find anything in the CONTRIBUTING.md document. Or did they literally get every past contributor to agree?

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#4

Post by bobthebuilders » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

Yet another Rust project sinking to the depths of closed source.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#5

Post by jcadam » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #2

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?

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#6

Post by rytill » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #2

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…

Would it be possible to simply fork an MIT-style license and relicense the new fork as AGPL? The pre-fork version can continue with its old license, but the new fork is AGPL.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#7

Post by jabo » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

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?

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#8

Post by ChickeNES » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #2

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…

I suppose we'll see a fork this weekend if they don't come to their senses, because it very much appears like there was no discussion about relicensing, nor is there a CLA

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#9

Post by orra » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

bobthebuilders wrote: post #4

Yet another Rust project sinking to the depths of closed source.

The AGPL is free and open source. It's a strong copyleft licence.

Re: Minio Changes License to AGPL

#10

Post by Quekid5 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

rytill wrote: post #6

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #2

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…

Would it be possible to simply fork an MIT-style license and relicense the new fork as AGPL? The pre-fork version can continue with its old license, but the new fork is AGPL.

You can't really just 'slap a new license on it' AFAIUI. What you can do is fork and license any new derivative work under a new license (which is one-way compatible with the old one). Effectively that means that the fork can only be used under the new license.