MinIO stops distributing free Docker images

There's also nothing wrong in being upset about something you relied on disappearing overnight. If someone decides to provide something for free, they should give time for people to stop relying on this free stuff if they can.

However, I also believe you should own it if you decide to ever rely on prebuilt Docker images. More specifically, if you are relying on prebuilt Docker images, you are letting someone else decide on a part of your infra. And yes, this someone else can decide to stop providing this part of your infra overnight. This is on you.

I also don't find anything wrong in deciding to not provide binaries for your open source project, or to stop providing binaries, including docker images.

Coolify is already doing it but your comment is on the verge of being passive agressive. I wouldn't say these are open source freeloaders because they could be using things like watchtowers etc. which automatically update and it could be a very huge deal for automated updates especially after I saw that some recent CVE of minio happened.

Simply put this just hurts the security of people running minio, I wouldn't say its freeloading, its actively harming the community. There are people in that thread who are paid customers as well saying that they lost a customer. I wouldn't say its freeloading. Minio already has some custom license or paid offering and I think that they make decent enough money out of it, providing docker files and then stopping to is kinda a shitty behaviour if they are unable to explain the reasons exactly why. I couldn't find the exact reasons on why they are doing what they are doing except making it hard for people to self host.

Sounds exactly like freeloading to me. You may think of that term negatively, but it is exactly what it is.

> One who does not contribute or pay appropriately; one who gets a free ride, etc. without paying a fair share.

Which I believe is a bit more generic (giving back might not be the only way of being fair).

> You may think of that term negatively

But the term carries a negative judgement, what's the point of this term otherwise? Without the judgemental part, you'd just say "using for free" or something.

The whole question is: is it fair to use open source software for free?

And I believe it is. Actually, this is stronger than this: I believe people should feel free to use free software for free, and should not be looked down for doing so. This is key for freedom 0 to be an actual thing. (I'm not set in stone in this position and would be happy change my mind on this though).

The notion of "giving back" can be discussed. I believe it is fair to get stuff from Person A for free and then helping B for free (later or earlier), in the hope that some person P will eventually help / have helped Person A for free for instance - this has the potential to provide everyone with a strong, helpful society and it would be even more enjoyable and reliable than a society that enforces pair to pair transactions.

Indeed, if someone always takes stuff for free and never contributes to anything, I would find this unfair (unless for some reason they can't contribute back, because of a disability or something). I would call this freeloading. Society cannot work like this. But you need the bigger picture to assess this.

When you start to try thinking about all this, the concepts of giving back, fairness, etc, it gets quite complicated. You also need to take in account the way society and the economical system works as a whole. What are the incentives, the motives, etc?

Basically, qualifying someone as a "open source freeloader" without context just because they use freedom 0 without paying is quite bold and might not be fair.

What if a company uses MinIO for free but provides some nice open source software?

Just don't judge someone too fast.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freeloader

Of course many creators are selfish. Once they have benefitted from everyone using their project they think: we want more. Then the rugpulls start. They think they no longer need their users, so now they can abuse them for additional profit.

People submitting PRs aren't freeloaders: they are building the product for you. People filing bug reports aren't freeloaders: they are helping you solve the bugs in your code. People writing blog posts about setting up MinIO aren't freeloaders: they are writing documentation for you. People holding talks about it at conferences aren't freeloaders: they are essentially doing free marketing for you. Even someone leaving a "thumbs up" on a Github issue isn't a freeloader anymore!

MinIO is also screwing over those active contributors, who are volunteering their time to improve the value of MinIO's product. That's not just "no longer helping freeloaders", that is "actively hurting the community".

Besides, I'm sure the community has plenty of people who would be more than happy to volunteer time to build Docker images. Do you really think MinIO is going to let them publish it under the official "minio/minio" name so the community can still benefit from it without MinIO having to "support freeloaders", or do you think there could be an ulterior motive behind nuking the image - such as pushing people to the paid version?