MinIO Faces Fallout for Stripping Functions from Open Source Version
Object storage system provider MinIO has stripped down the UI for its S3-compatible open-source object store, in a move that spotlights the tension between vendors’ interests in their commercial offerings and a product’s status in the open-source space.
The story began in March, when MinIO co-founder Harshavardhana posted a pull request (PR) on GitHub, notifying the open-source community that the open-source Community Edition of MinIO's object store software, which carries an AGPLv3 license from the Free Software Foundation, would be “simplified.” The adjustment eliminated the Web-based UI that made it easy to manage administrative functions such as policies, real-time monitoring, and replication controls. While the command-line interface (CLI) can still be used to perform these functions, the administrative portions of the Web UI are now restricted to the vendor's commercial MinIO AIStor Enterprise Edition product, which starts at $96,000 annually for an enterprise license supporting up to 400 terabytes of usable storage capacity.
A Bubble of Outrage
Among some open-source users, the outcry was immediate. “What was the point of this? You deleted all the functionality and left us with just an annoying popup,” posted a GitHub user.
Harshavardana replied:
“Building and supporting separate graphical consoles for the community and commercial branches is substantial. Honestly, it is hard to duplicate this work for the community branch. A whole team is involved in console development alone, including design, UX, front-end, back-end, and pen testing. This commit introduces an enhanced object browser but removes the unmaintained admin UI code.”
“They literally gutted everything except the object browser,” wrote one user on Reddit. And another posted: “Well, they implemented the long-awaited ‘simplified UI’ request. That is what the [pull request] says.”
A reply: “Oh thank god, I requested that on their GitHub. My 3-year-old daughter was getting overwhelmed by the many options on the admin interface.”
When Interests Collide
MinIO is just the latest in a string of firms that have faced complaints after making changes to their open-source software. A similar situation faced HashiCorp, which in 2023 shifted its product availability from free open-source licensing to Business Source Licensing (BSL). While the comparison isn’t exact because MinIO hasn’t removed its open-source licensing, the principle is similar: Capabilities once freely available are now behind a paywall.
Cockroach Labs also shifted in 2019 from a free open-source model to a modified version that required licensing for commercial use. And late in 2024, the vendor announced that it would no longer offer a free version of its CockroachDB Core product, instead making its Enterprise version freely available to students, universities, or companies with under $10 million in revenue. Larger companies must pay on a per-CPU basis.
How MinIO Sees It
The problem is simple enough to see: As a company grows, it finds it too difficult to maintain both an enterprise edition and an open-source version for free. As Harshavardhana noted, substantial resources go into developing successful products. At some point, the math doesn't add up to the company's advantage.
And MinIO has been successful: A Futuriom 50 company, it claims hundreds of customers worldwide. According to the company, its MinIO AIStor flagship is designed for mission-critical, production workloads and powers many of the largest private cloud AI deployments in the world. With a growing customer base eager for a well-maintained Web UI, MinIO appears to have determined it was just not feasible to devote resources to the MinIO Community Edition anymore.
"The open-source community totally understands this," said MinIO CEO and co-founder Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy, in an interview. Users in the open-source community still have access to the source code of MinIO's Community Edition object store via the AGPLv3 license. If MinIO wasn't prepared to maintain the Web UI that's part of the Community Edition, members of the community realize that it's unfair to set an expectation that the code would be maintained, Periasamy said. It's also a security risk to leave unmaintained code in the Community Edition, he notes.
The Fallout
Still, MinIO, like other vendors who’ve made adjustments to open-source versions of their software, faces fallout from its decision. Some users on Reddit are talking about open-source alternatives to MinIO's object store, such as Ceph, Garage, or SeaweedFS.
Another disgruntled user stated on Reddit: “Open source users aren’t confused. They’re insulted. Know the difference between community and capture?”
At least one competitor is leveraging customer dissatisfaction with MinIO’s strategy to boost their sales pitches. Rival Cloudian is pointing its finger squarely at its competitor online. “If you’re rethinking your storage strategy, Cloudian offers a stable, scalable, and S3-native alternative — with a full-featured management interface, advanced security, and exabyte-level scalability… all at a fraction of the cost [of MinIO],” states Cloudian CMO Jon Toor in a LinkedIn post. “Don’t let someone else’s roadmap disrupt your operations.”
But users remain skeptical of vendors posing as saviors. Wrote one on Reddit: “MinIO burned trust, sure…. Cloudian’s trying to sell you a fire extinguisher—with a license key and a training fee.”
None of this concerns Periasamy. Developers in the open-source community really need an API, not a Web UI, he said. And that's still available to them. MinIO's Web UI was meant for enterprise IT customers who lacked technical expertise. Users who understand the open-source process are fine with the changes, he said.
Futuriom Take: MinIO’s strategy to remove features from the open-source edition of its object store prompted outrage from some users. Still, the business argument in MinIO’s favor is understandable, though the company must deal with user pushback and gleeful competitors moving in for the kill.
