Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#1

Post by gaul » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license
blog.min.io

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#2

Post by oigursh » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 7:56 AM UTC

Open and shut case. Disappointing that the Nutanix engineers care so little about their peers.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#3

Post by bradwood » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 8:35 AM UTC

They use a load of other FOSS software under the hood too, not least of which libvirt/KVM.

I wonder how many other licences they're violating this way.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#4

Post by jarym » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 8:45 AM UTC

Kudos for MinIO team for spending THREE YEARS trying to resolve this. Shame that they had to resort to a public naming and shaming but sometimes corporate entities are tone deaf.

Now this is exposed the next question is if Nutanix Objects is just a MinIO wrapper then what value are they even proving here?

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#5

Post by stevewatson301 » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:06 AM UTC

You'd think Nutanix would have the brains to change the names of the deployed binaries, which brings up an interesting question. How do you detect license violation if the violator has replaced the brand name across the codebase?

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#6

Post by pabs3 » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

Will revoking their license stop Nutanix from using MinIO or will they have to go to court to get them to stop? I don't see any mention of a lawsuit in the post.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#7

Post by pabs3 » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:24 AM UTC

stevewatson301 wrote: post #5

You'd think Nutanix would have the brains to change the names of the deployed binaries, which brings up an interesting question. How do you detect license violation if the violator has replaced the brand name across the codebase?

Patterns of strings, function names, other symbols and the entire call graph usually show up in the compiled binary, unless they apply some sort of obfuscator to the process.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#8

Post by tut-urut-utut » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

oigursh wrote: post #2

Open and shut case. Disappointing that the Nutanix engineers care so little about their peers.

Please don't blame engineers on every single issue. The engineer may not even know there's an issue here. They may be assured by their boss or legal department that they are in the clear. They may not even think about such mundane things like licensing and stuff, that's what they have higher ups for.

If someone is to blame, then it's the company leadership and legal department. As much as we want to make us engineers more important than we are, we are not decision makers. Blame should be put where it belongs.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#9

Post by henvic » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

Any recommendations on MinIO forks or open-source alternatives with more welcoming licenses?

They changed their license from Apache recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinIO#Re-licensing

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#10

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

I wonder why these folks keep doing this. Do they believe nobody will find out? Or that even if they find out, they won't have to pay much so they factor it in? It's really hard to imagine for me.