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MinIO stops distributing free Docker images

(github.com)
672 points LexSiga | 4 comments | 22 Oct 25 06:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mattbee ◴[22 Oct 25 10:53 UTC] No.45667259[source]▶
They abandoned documentation (edit: for the open source codebase) a couple of weeks ago - that seems more significant.

From their Slack on Oct 10:

"The documentation sites at docs.min.io/community have been pulled of this morning and will redirect to the equivalent AIStor documentation where possible". [emphasis mine]

The minio/docs repository hasn't been updated in 2 weeks now, and the implication is that isn't going to be.

Even when I set up a minio cluster this February, it was both impressively easy and hard in a few small aspects. The most crucial installation tips - around 100Gb networking, Linux kernel tunables and fault-finding - were hung off comments on their github, talking about files that were deleted from the repository years ago.

I've built a cluster for a client that's being expanded to ≈100PB this year. The price of support comes in at at slightly less than the equivalent amount of S3 storage (not including the actual hosting costs!). The value of it just isn't that high to my client - so I guess we're just coasting on what we can get now, and will have to see what real community might form around the source.

I'm not a free software die-hard so I'm grateful for the work minio have put into the world, and the business it's enabling. But it seems super-clear they're stopping those contributions, and I'd bet the final open source release will happen in the next year.

If anyone else is hosting with minio & can't afford the support either :) please drop me a line and maybe we can get something going.

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Kevinmetaba ◴[22 Oct 25 15:11 UTC] No.45670374[source]▶
During an upgrade, I discovered that the console had been removed without any prior notice. MinIO really pissed me off. Over a month ago, I started looking for a MinIO alternative and found RustFS. I've been testing RustFS for over a month now, and the product continues to improve, with the community fixing bugs very quickly. I hope YC will invest in this company.
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nunez ◴[22 Oct 25 15:23 UTC] No.45670553[source]▶
At the same time, I'm concerned that a YC investment means more of the same, eventually: open-source until it's no longer fiscally prudent.
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1. Kevinmetaba ◴[22 Oct 25 15:26 UTC] No.45670583[source]▶
Is open source and making money in conflict? If they do a good job, I am willing to pay.
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2. throwway120385 ◴[22 Oct 25 15:32 UTC] No.45670672[source]▶
Not necessarily, but if there's a cost to providing free support to the community like official container images, then it will get cut. People comment that it's "free" to provide these things through Github, but it actually has a cost to the maintainers in time, and it's frankly an easy business decision to stop doing that at times in favor of roadmap work that produces business value.

What I'm learning from this is to provide basically zero support from the outset and let it grow organically if I ever build a business on an open source product. As soon as you stop supporting anything for free someone feels entitled to it.

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3. ◴[22 Oct 25 16:07 UTC] No.45671256[source]▶
4. tankenmate ◴[22 Oct 25 16:15 UTC] No.45671379[source]▶
"but if there's a cost to providing free support to the community like official container images, then it will get cut.", but here's the kicker, supporting creating docker images when you're on github is close to negligible as to be paper thin.