5 ms·

If we were serious about funding open source, I don't think this would be as common. If a developer needs a pay day, are we surprised if they take it from an i

If we were serious about funding open source, I don't think this would be as common. If a developer needs a pay day, are we surprised if they take it from an investor who wants returns?

phoronixrly 1y ago
Good call. Meanwhile anyone is entitled to fork while minio are completely entitled to enshittify as much as they like.
- nine_k 1y ago
  This actually sounds fair. Either you pay for their efforts towards development and maintenance, or make your own efforts. The saddest thing here is that MinIO is apparently not important enough for the big names that use it to receive donations / sponsorship funds sufficient to continue as is :-/
  - overfeed 1y ago
    The big names have their own storage solutions they are trying to sell (or quietly using internally). MinIO is at best, something they can't make use of, or at worst, competition.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Dual license is the way, GPL + commercial. Downstream only gets to do whatever they are willing to contribute upstream.
j1elo 1y ago
That's perfectly fine but the investor exists in this scenario because of the user base that the product has; and the user base itself exists in part because of the features that were given for free and later are removed. Would they have been able to even have investment if the parts they want to charge for, had been charged for from the start, to avoid the bait and switch?
- mikepurvis 1y ago
  As a thought experiment, what if instead of the company removing the web UI, the company had folded and left 1.x as the last version of MinIO, while some new company was formed which forked MinIO 1.x to a different name and removed those things, offering them under a freemium model? I think in that scenario, it would be much more clear-cut that the responses would be: 1. Well that's a bummer that MinIO wasn't sustainable as it was; I'll just stick with 1.x forever, or 2. Well thank goodness this new company stepped up and is taking over maintenance and development; I'm willing to pay them to get ongoing support and having continued access to the web console feature in new versions seems like a fair price to pay.
  - jchw 1y ago
    I don't actually think it would go down like that so I think the point is moot, but are we really going to go through this again? Developers should (and often do) know better than to get into these unsustainable situations, but they still do it. I have some unsolicited advice: please don't open source something that you are actively planning to sell. Nobody will take this advice of course, because delivering your product as an open source project is an easy way to generate some leads and even get some free labor here and there. But if you don't want people to feel deceived, start with your expectations out front and magically people won't be angry at you. On the other hand, I agree people wouldn't be angry at company B in this scenario, because they're not the ones who set the incorrect expectations to begin with. OTOH though I really do doubt "we just removed some features so we could charge you for them" would be a successful pitch as a brand new vendor for something. I'm struggling to understand how there's even still a lot of debate on this subject because it's very simple, if you can pull off a sustainable FOSS project then the world will be grateful but in many cases it becomes very clear over time that there was effectively no plan, just a lot of hope that maybe things would work out somehow. Whatever good that is.
    - mikepurvis 1y ago
      > "we just removed some features so we could charge you for them" I think the pitch would be more like "we want to focus our more limited resources toward ensuring the core of the product is as good as possible, and there isn't a way to continue shipping an unmaintained version of the UI, so we haven't brought that part of MinIO into the community version of <new product name XX>. By offering it as a paid option, we hope to be able to sustainably maintain both the open and closed parts of XX over the long term."
linsomniac 1y ago
thanks.dev seems to me like it's making SOME headway into paying open source developers. At least, I've fallen into a couple hundred bucks of unexpected payments there for open source contributions. Also, github sponsors seems to work some as well. I enabled it last year and I've had a few gracious souls throw up to $50 at a time into my tip jar, though I've sent out way more than has come in (but that's ok). I sure wish I could get my company to start contributing some significant funds though. We get a huge benefit from open source, but never seem to have the money to spend towards it.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  > I sure wish I could get my company to start contributing some significant funds though. We get a huge benefit from open source, but never seem to have the money to spend towards it. What, and pay the people actually creating the value?!
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    There's no point doing this. If something is being given away with no strings attached, don't be surprised when it's used.
    - lenerdenator 1y ago
      That's true, to a point. Everyone's happy to get software in exchange for nothing from a project with only a handful of people working on it, until there's a problem in the code that is a real bear and causes massive vulnerabilities, and on a long enough horizon, that will happen to any sort of code running on machines connected to the internet. If your entire business model relies on that code, it'd be wise to back the project, even with token support. I'm talking about less than cost of one team building outing.
      - robertlagrant 1y ago
        Sorry - I wasn't clear. I meant there's no point talking the way you were about how businesses should pay the people "actually" creating the value. All sorts of people create value, and if your business has some volunteers willing to give you work for nothing, you shouldn't assume they did all the work and are the sole ones who should've been paid all along. I agree that it's a good idea to de-risk your supply chain. The problem is a lot of OSS is popular because it's free, and often there isn't a stable business backing it that an org could have confidence in giving money to. If you're just donating to a GitHub account there's still no likelihood that the project will stick around.
lenerdenator 1y ago
If they want or need a payday, they probably shouldn't be expecting it from code, that serves a purpose for technically-inclined people, that they released for free in a non-reversible manner. We need more people looking to Jimmy Wales as an example of how FLOSS can work instead of Silicon Valley.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
  What did Jimmy Wales do they should be emulated?
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    Built a massive software effort (Wikimedia) based on volunteers that is open and keeps him decently comfortable in a nice city (London), but little more. He's led the effort in a way that has enabled to project to stick to the core values.
    - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
      Some people would criticize the fact that Wikipedia survives on volunteers as exploitation.
      - overfeed 1y ago
        Those people better not be supporters of be open-core software projects that "exploit" volunteer contributors, or they'd be hypocrites.
        ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
        Hypocritical or not, that isn't really an argument against Wikipedia surviving on unpaid labor and saying that that is the model to pursue.
        overfeed 1y ago
jsiepkes 1y ago
I highly doubt they are running at a loss now. They want a bigger piece of the pie. A bunch of donations or paying OSS devs isn't going to bring in the money a successful for-profit operation with licenses per user, per CPU, per month, per.... is going to bring in.
mystified5016 1y ago
The problem is not developers accepting investing, but that investors are predatory and malicious. The company and product doesn't matter and they'll happily burn it to the ground if that makes more money. As a society we should probably consider such behavior unacceptable and deserving of strong governmental protection. But alas, this behavior makes line go up.
- riku_iki 1y ago
  > The company and product doesn't matter and they'll happily burn it to the ground if that makes more money. they do not burn it to the ground, community has open source high quality product for absolutely free developed on investors money. Anyone can fork it, and do whatever he wants. I imagine if product is very good, and parent corp will decide to close sources, there could be some smaller business/consultancy supporting OSS version of this, or even MS/Google take over it as it happened many times e.g. ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  The problem is feeling entitled to be paid for a job, even getting something like a Mac, without ever contributing a penny to upstream, across all tools that make that nice paying job possible in first place.
weinzierl 1y ago
True, but there is something else we all can do to prevent cases like MinIO and all the others that cause outrage on HN every couple of weeks: Only contribute to projects that: 1. Have a Copyleft license 2. Have no CLA and do not require copyright assignment 3. Have enough independent contributors to make relicensing practically impossible Bonus points if the project is governed by a 501(3) (not a 501(6)). MinIO fails point 2. Redis failed point 1. Happy to hear a good example for failing point 3. Basically a (A)GPL product that was only developed by employees.
- pas 1y ago
  Redis became OSI approved again. Also if MinIO and this UI is that amazing, then people would fork it. (Unfortunately I never had good experiences with MinIO, because it was just a bit less complicated than Ceph and the docs and admin tools much less mature and stable, and due to this I simply never got to performance evaluation.)
pjmlp 1y ago
Indeed, paying for expensive toys like Apple hardware is a given, but paying for the tools that make one's job possible in first place is asking too much. No wonder that we are slowly coming back to the shareware, public domain and trial demos, used to distribute software on 8 and 16 bit home computing.
JimBlackwood 1y ago
The gap in pricing between enterprise and open source makes it impossible. If MinIO were to require a license to run, I’m sure I could convince a boss at work to pay several thousands a month for it. Currently, we are paying about 5000€/month for the hardware to run our MinIO cluster and 0€/month for the MinIO devs. If we now want to keep using their UI, the license costs would be €20.000,-/month. That is an insane gap

If we were serious about funding open source, I don't think this would be as common. If a developer needs a pay day, are we surprised if they take it from an investor who wants returns?

phoronixrly 1y ago

Good call. Meanwhile anyone is entitled to fork while minio are completely entitled to enshittify as much as they like.

nine_k 1y ago
This actually sounds fair. Either you pay for their efforts towards development and maintenance, or make your own efforts. The saddest thing here is that MinIO is apparently not important enough for the big names that use it to receive donations / sponsorship funds sufficient to continue as is :-/
- overfeed 1y ago
  The big names have their own storage solutions they are trying to sell (or quietly using internally). MinIO is at best, something they can't make use of, or at worst, competition.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Dual license is the way, GPL + commercial. Downstream only gets to do whatever they are willing to contribute upstream.

j1elo 1y ago

That's perfectly fine but the investor exists in this scenario because of the user base that the product has; and the user base itself exists in part because of the features that were given for free and later are removed. Would they have been able to even have investment if the parts they want to charge for, had been charged for from the start, to avoid the bait and switch?

mikepurvis 1y ago
As a thought experiment, what if instead of the company removing the web UI, the company had folded and left 1.x as the last version of MinIO, while some new company was formed which forked MinIO 1.x to a different name and removed those things, offering them under a freemium model? I think in that scenario, it would be much more clear-cut that the responses would be: 1. Well that's a bummer that MinIO wasn't sustainable as it was; I'll just stick with 1.x forever, or 2. Well thank goodness this new company stepped up and is taking over maintenance and development; I'm willing to pay them to get ongoing support and having continued access to the web console feature in new versions seems like a fair price to pay.
- jchw 1y ago
  I don't actually think it would go down like that so I think the point is moot, but are we really going to go through this again? Developers should (and often do) know better than to get into these unsustainable situations, but they still do it. I have some unsolicited advice: please don't open source something that you are actively planning to sell. Nobody will take this advice of course, because delivering your product as an open source project is an easy way to generate some leads and even get some free labor here and there. But if you don't want people to feel deceived, start with your expectations out front and magically people won't be angry at you. On the other hand, I agree people wouldn't be angry at company B in this scenario, because they're not the ones who set the incorrect expectations to begin with. OTOH though I really do doubt "we just removed some features so we could charge you for them" would be a successful pitch as a brand new vendor for something. I'm struggling to understand how there's even still a lot of debate on this subject because it's very simple, if you can pull off a sustainable FOSS project then the world will be grateful but in many cases it becomes very clear over time that there was effectively no plan, just a lot of hope that maybe things would work out somehow. Whatever good that is.
  - mikepurvis 1y ago
    > "we just removed some features so we could charge you for them" I think the pitch would be more like "we want to focus our more limited resources toward ensuring the core of the product is as good as possible, and there isn't a way to continue shipping an unmaintained version of the UI, so we haven't brought that part of MinIO into the community version of <new product name XX>. By offering it as a paid option, we hope to be able to sustainably maintain both the open and closed parts of XX over the long term."

linsomniac 1y ago

thanks.dev seems to me like it's making SOME headway into paying open source developers. At least, I've fallen into a couple hundred bucks of unexpected payments there for open source contributions. Also, github sponsors seems to work some as well. I enabled it last year and I've had a few gracious souls throw up to $50 at a time into my tip jar, though I've sent out way more than has come in (but that's ok). I sure wish I could get my company to start contributing some significant funds though. We get a huge benefit from open source, but never seem to have the money to spend towards it.

lenerdenator 1y ago
> I sure wish I could get my company to start contributing some significant funds though. We get a huge benefit from open source, but never seem to have the money to spend towards it. What, and pay the people actually creating the value?!
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  There's no point doing this. If something is being given away with no strings attached, don't be surprised when it's used.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    That's true, to a point. Everyone's happy to get software in exchange for nothing from a project with only a handful of people working on it, until there's a problem in the code that is a real bear and causes massive vulnerabilities, and on a long enough horizon, that will happen to any sort of code running on machines connected to the internet. If your entire business model relies on that code, it'd be wise to back the project, even with token support. I'm talking about less than cost of one team building outing.
    - robertlagrant 1y ago
      Sorry - I wasn't clear. I meant there's no point talking the way you were about how businesses should pay the people "actually" creating the value. All sorts of people create value, and if your business has some volunteers willing to give you work for nothing, you shouldn't assume they did all the work and are the sole ones who should've been paid all along. I agree that it's a good idea to de-risk your supply chain. The problem is a lot of OSS is popular because it's free, and often there isn't a stable business backing it that an org could have confidence in giving money to. If you're just donating to a GitHub account there's still no likelihood that the project will stick around.

lenerdenator 1y ago

If they want or need a payday, they probably shouldn't be expecting it from code, that serves a purpose for technically-inclined people, that they released for free in a non-reversible manner. We need more people looking to Jimmy Wales as an example of how FLOSS can work instead of Silicon Valley.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
What did Jimmy Wales do they should be emulated?
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  Built a massive software effort (Wikimedia) based on volunteers that is open and keeps him decently comfortable in a nice city (London), but little more. He's led the effort in a way that has enabled to project to stick to the core values.
  - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
    Some people would criticize the fact that Wikipedia survives on volunteers as exploitation.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      Those people better not be supporters of be open-core software projects that "exploit" volunteer contributors, or they'd be hypocrites.
      - ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
        Hypocritical or not, that isn't really an argument against Wikipedia surviving on unpaid labor and saying that that is the model to pursue.
        overfeed 1y ago

jsiepkes 1y ago

I highly doubt they are running at a loss now. They want a bigger piece of the pie. A bunch of donations or paying OSS devs isn't going to bring in the money a successful for-profit operation with licenses per user, per CPU, per month, per.... is going to bring in.

mystified5016 1y ago

The problem is not developers accepting investing, but that investors are predatory and malicious. The company and product doesn't matter and they'll happily burn it to the ground if that makes more money. As a society we should probably consider such behavior unacceptable and deserving of strong governmental protection. But alas, this behavior makes line go up.

riku_iki 1y ago
> The company and product doesn't matter and they'll happily burn it to the ground if that makes more money. they do not burn it to the ground, community has open source high quality product for absolutely free developed on investors money. Anyone can fork it, and do whatever he wants. I imagine if product is very good, and parent corp will decide to close sources, there could be some smaller business/consultancy supporting OSS version of this, or even MS/Google take over it as it happened many times e.g. ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch.
pjmlp 1y ago
The problem is feeling entitled to be paid for a job, even getting something like a Mac, without ever contributing a penny to upstream, across all tools that make that nice paying job possible in first place.

weinzierl 1y ago

True, but there is something else we all can do to prevent cases like MinIO and all the others that cause outrage on HN every couple of weeks: Only contribute to projects that: 1. Have a Copyleft license 2. Have no CLA and do not require copyright assignment 3. Have enough independent contributors to make relicensing practically impossible Bonus points if the project is governed by a 501(3) (not a 501(6)). MinIO fails point 2. Redis failed point 1. Happy to hear a good example for failing point 3. Basically a (A)GPL product that was only developed by employees.

pas 1y ago
Redis became OSI approved again. Also if MinIO and this UI is that amazing, then people would fork it. (Unfortunately I never had good experiences with MinIO, because it was just a bit less complicated than Ceph and the docs and admin tools much less mature and stable, and due to this I simply never got to performance evaluation.)

pjmlp 1y ago

Indeed, paying for expensive toys like Apple hardware is a given, but paying for the tools that make one's job possible in first place is asking too much. No wonder that we are slowly coming back to the shareware, public domain and trial demos, used to distribute software on 8 and 16 bit home computing.

JimBlackwood 1y ago

The gap in pricing between enterprise and open source makes it impossible. If MinIO were to require a license to run, I’m sure I could convince a boss at work to pay several thousands a month for it. Currently, we are paying about 5000€/month for the hardware to run our MinIO cluster and 0€/month for the MinIO devs. If we now want to keep using their UI, the license costs would be €20.000,-/month. That is an insane gap