Nuantrix distributed a version that was still Apache licensed and merely failed to disclose they had made changes.

This is after MinIO asserted that Weka had also stolen their AGPL-licensed code, showing that they extracted binaries from the distribution. They forgot that that 3-month old (unmodified) version was still Apache licensed though.

MinIO generally don't seem to consult lawyers often. They haven't even set up copyright assignment / CLA immediately after switching the license, so technically they are also incapable of selling AGPL license exceptions just like everyone else.

I've done my best to keep MinIO away from most infra I manage, not because of legal concerns but because it was kind of obvious they'd eventually go full scorched earth and either drop images or the source code distribution all together. Maybe now we can all move on to a fork, or SeaweedFS, or Ceph, or literally anything else.

They don't consult lawyers. The CEO husband and wife team get really angry and fire off threatening letters, but I've never seen them consult a lawyer before sending a letter like that or accusing a company of violating a license publicly.

> showing that they extracted binaries from the distribution

Funnily enough, such action is outside of their paid product's EULA.

It’s the sort of behaviour that makes them relying on them even as a paying customer extremely risky.

That just means the fork would also need to be AGPL licensed, and the owner of the fork wouldn't be able to also sell a proprietary version with additional "enterprise" features. And IMO that would be a good thing.

I think it is unlikely a single entity would do that. But a coalition of current MinIO users might get together to create such a project, perhaps under the Auspices of a foundation such as the Linux Foundation. Although, I think that scenario would be more similar to OpenTofu than Valkey.

I am definitely not a lawyer, but as a thought experiment, would Amazon be able to take the AGPL Minio source code, turn it into a managed service, and resell that to customers?

Was under the impression that the answer is yes, they could - with the caveat that they'd have to release the modified source code of whatever backend services are also tied into the Minio source code. For example the AWS control plane that would launch customer instances of Minio, monitor it, etc would also need to be open sourced?