Weka Violates MinIO's Open Source Licenses(blog.min.io)
blog.min.io
Weka Violates MinIO's Open Source Licenses
https://blog.min.io/weka-violates-minios-open-source-licenses/
19 comments
Weka's response to minIO is here: https://www.weka.io/blog/file-system/weka-responds-to-unfoun...
It is well worth reading.
It is well worth reading.
Interesting case. Based upon the screenshots, it doesn't looking like they're trying to hide things though. Not like a typical fork and hide-via-rebrand. The web UI still shows Minio, and the CLI example shows the Minio copyright and link to the codebase repo.
I'd be interested to know if the "About" link in show shown WebUI screenshot goes to Minio or Weka. If it goes to Minio, could that be considered (combined with the minio branding) showing attribution? Has a Weka customer been rejected sources upon request for the AGPL works (Or been told they're soley using the apache code)?
There's also an interesting question of how the GPL/AGPL copyleft acts in this mode of distribution. From the screenshot, they're distributed in a single ZIP but the (potential AGPL) works appear to be in their own image. So does that act as separate networked applications, and therefore copyleft does not affect the other images (bit still with a requirement to share sources with the AGPL) or does that count as a single combined works?
I'd be interested to know if the "About" link in show shown WebUI screenshot goes to Minio or Weka. If it goes to Minio, could that be considered (combined with the minio branding) showing attribution? Has a Weka customer been rejected sources upon request for the AGPL works (Or been told they're soley using the apache code)?
There's also an interesting question of how the GPL/AGPL copyleft acts in this mode of distribution. From the screenshot, they're distributed in a single ZIP but the (potential AGPL) works appear to be in their own image. So does that act as separate networked applications, and therefore copyleft does not affect the other images (bit still with a requirement to share sources with the AGPL) or does that count as a single combined works?
The screenshots weren't of Weka's UI, but of Minio's after you manually extract those binaries. I'm not familiar with Weka, but it would be easy enough to stand up the Minio server and communicate internally over the S3 protocol, and never show any native Minio screens.
Attribution needs to be explicit for Open Source Licenses prominently available for customers to look at.
Making money off from another product calling it your own innovation is plagiarism.
https://www.weka.io/blog/cloud-storage/amazon-s3-protocol/
There is never a mention of that it uses MinIO underneath.
Making money off from another product calling it your own innovation is plagiarism.
https://www.weka.io/blog/cloud-storage/amazon-s3-protocol/
There is never a mention of that it uses MinIO underneath.
But it explicitly shows that it's using Minio when the application is actually used?
Sure, it's totally uncool to not mention Minio on their site and that's a massive shame but, as far as I'm aware, nothing in the license would require Weka to explicitly mention they're using Minio in their advertising/marketing like the provided link?
Sure, it's totally uncool to not mention Minio on their site and that's a massive shame but, as far as I'm aware, nothing in the license would require Weka to explicitly mention they're using Minio in their advertising/marketing like the provided link?
> Based upon the screenshots, it doesn't looking like they're trying to hide things though.
The screenshots are produced by manually mounting a squashfs, locating a minio binary and running it. It's not a very clear (and completely convincing) demonstration, and IMO could better have been left out.
The screenshots are produced by manually mounting a squashfs, locating a minio binary and running it. It's not a very clear (and completely convincing) demonstration, and IMO could better have been left out.
> Weka is one such company and as you will find below, they are distributing the entire MinIO binary in their product, without attribution, to implement their object storage functionality.
What's the point of making MinIO an open source product if you subsequently then get mad that someone else is using your open source product? All this article tells me is that MinIO is not truly "open source."
This acts as a great warning to stay away from MinIO. Shame, because I was a big fan in its early days, and actually ran a deployment myself before they started introducing an entire host of anti-features.
What's the point of making MinIO an open source product if you subsequently then get mad that someone else is using your open source product? All this article tells me is that MinIO is not truly "open source."
This acts as a great warning to stay away from MinIO. Shame, because I was a big fan in its early days, and actually ran a deployment myself before they started introducing an entire host of anti-features.
Open source and copy left is explicitly not public domain, which is what you seem to be claiming it is.
Open source and copy left has very well established rules and licensing terms. If you are selling a product using OSS software you are agreeing to the terms of that license. The includes both explicitly acknowledging that you are using said product, but also the source code for the version of the OSS project you are using, as well as the changes you have made to that OSS code, and generally any other software you write on top of it.
If you don’t want to do that, then you would need a different license that you would have to negotiate with all the copyright owners of the project. If you don’t do that then you have no license to use the software at all, let alone to redistribute it.
This isn’t a complicated concept.
Open source and copy left has very well established rules and licensing terms. If you are selling a product using OSS software you are agreeing to the terms of that license. The includes both explicitly acknowledging that you are using said product, but also the source code for the version of the OSS project you are using, as well as the changes you have made to that OSS code, and generally any other software you write on top of it.
If you don’t want to do that, then you would need a different license that you would have to negotiate with all the copyright owners of the project. If you don’t do that then you have no license to use the software at all, let alone to redistribute it.
This isn’t a complicated concept.
Oh my sweet summer child, if you think some strings in a file called LICENSE.txt in your repository is going to change how your software is used in practice, I have some bad news for you :) This is something you will learn as you gain more experience in the industry.
8 years ago I put a small C library for an extremely niche product on Github, for my own archival. No license and no intent for it to be used by anyone other than myself. To my surprise, I found out a few years ago it's used in quite a few projects--and in at least one case, used in automotive software you've probably used before ;)
Do I cry and complain that I didn't get credit or a paycheck? No. This is the true spirit of free and open source software. Sharing code with the world for the collective improvement of software everywhere. Open source is not pursuing frivolous lawsuits as MinIO is doing here.
8 years ago I put a small C library for an extremely niche product on Github, for my own archival. No license and no intent for it to be used by anyone other than myself. To my surprise, I found out a few years ago it's used in quite a few projects--and in at least one case, used in automotive software you've probably used before ;)
Do I cry and complain that I didn't get credit or a paycheck? No. This is the true spirit of free and open source software. Sharing code with the world for the collective improvement of software everywhere. Open source is not pursuing frivolous lawsuits as MinIO is doing here.
You fail to understand how copyleft works. The whole point of licenses such as GPL for example isn't to allow the user to do anything with the code. Doing so would allow ruthless businesses to immediately take advantage of that uncontrolled freedom because all patches, forks and derivative works would become closed in no time. The point of such licenses is rather to give more freedom to the majority of users by preventing others from restricting how software would be distributed.
> This is the true spirit of free and open source software. Sharing code with the world for the collective improvement of software everywhere.
Did whoever took your code share their bug fixes and updates with the community, so that the original code could be improved? If not, that would actually be against the true spirit of free and open source software.
> This is the true spirit of free and open source software. Sharing code with the world for the collective improvement of software everywhere.
Did whoever took your code share their bug fixes and updates with the community, so that the original code could be improved? If not, that would actually be against the true spirit of free and open source software.
Maybe you can sue them for copyright violation?
Just because someone is using your work without compensation or attribution does not mean that everyone should settle for that. in the true spirit of open source you should sue every last one of them and then hand the money you win off to open source projects.
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Open source does not mean "I take random projects, integrate them into my product, without any credits, without any acknowledgments". It means "I take projects, integrate them into my product and follow the minor implications of the license"
For example the MIT-License has a rule:
For example the MIT-License has a rule:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
did you just learn about copyleft? It's not a new concept
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Huh, that's funny, I guess which one came first?