Comment by Tepix

"That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though."

This is true legally, but not otherwise (socially, practically)

"That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody."

Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall.

Imagine I provide free electricity to everyone in my town. I encourage everyone to use it. I do it all for free. I'm very careful to ensure the legal framework means i have no obligation, and everyone knows i have no obligations to them legally. They all take me up on it. All the other providers wither and die as a result. 15 years later, i decide to shut it all down on a whim because i want to move on to other things. The lights go out for the town everywhere.

Saying "i have no legal obligations" is true, but expecting people to not be pissed off, complain, and expect me to not do this is at best, naive.

Calling them entitled is even funnier. It's sort of irrelevant if they are entitled or not, after i put them in this position.

Legal obligation is not the only form of obligation, and not even the interesting ones most of the time.

More importantly - society has never survived on legal obligation alone.

I do not think you would enjoy living in a world where legal obligation is the only thing that mattered.

Have you not seen some of the replies at the link?

For example:

"You are joking ?!

The commit about source only is 4 days old (9e49d5e)

We are currently paying for a license while using the open source version, you already removed the oidc code from UI console and now docker images. We are not happy by this lock-in. We will discuss this internally, but you may loose a paying customer with this behavior."

I think if you analyzed your day to day life you'd be surprised with how many reliances you have on norms and social contracts. I personally don't want to live in a world that depends on an explicit legal basis for every single thing, and I doubt you want to either.

The GP didn't say it entitled them to anything, but that it created a sense of entitlement. You are correct there's no contractual obligation to do so, but it was likely a part of the decision to go with their solution, i.e. "they make it easy to deploy!". It is a very logical conclusion to say "they just made it HARDER THAN BEFORE to deploy".

Promises are not always explicit written permission; that's why I got in trouble for re-broadcasting major-league baseball with only implicit verbal permission (thanks, Simpsons!)

> That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.

Even as a paying customer on a $1m/yr contract, still using the open source distribution because AIStor is not something we are keen on, we were not informed whatsoever.

They were well aware we were still using those container images, and we were by far the only paying customers doing the same.

This is malicious.

> > When you always published and built Docker images for the public you are creating an expectation

> That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though.

Note that implied contracts do exist, and sometimes expectations based on prior conduct do suffice to form an enforcable contract. In this case, I don't know whether you can reasonably make that argument, but that's never stopped enterprising lawyers before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied-in-fact_contract

“I’m not legally required to be nice” has become a classic and very common HN/Reddit argument. While true, it’s kind of beside the point. People often go beyond what they are legally obligated to do, and other people often expect others to go beyond what we are legally obligated to do. This is about nice vs. not-nice instead of legal vs. illegal.

Calling out shitty behavior doesn’t mean you felt “entitled” to anything.

Not all shitty behavior is governed by contracts and licenses. You can be an asshole without violating the terms of a license.

> Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.

When a restaurant which you've been going to for years one day decides to serve you your favorite meal with a bit of poop on the side, do you not have the right to be upset about it? They're not under any obligation to serve you meals you're happy with. There was no contract or promise. The fact you're paying for their service doesn't buy you these rights either. Those are just the terms of service both parties have agreed to.

Similarly, open source software is much more than a license. There is a basic social contract of not being an asshole to users of your product, which is an unwritten rule not just in software and industry in general, but in society as a whole. The free software movement is an extension of this mindset, and focuses on building software for the benefit of everyone, not just those who happen to pay for it, or those who meet your specific criteria. Claiming you support this philosophy, while acting against it, is hypocritical, and abusive towards people who do believe in it. And your point is that that people who complain about this are entitled? Give me a break.

If you want to place restrictions on how your software is used and who gets to enjoy it, that's fine, but make those terms explicit by choosing the appropriate license and business model from the start. Stop abusing OSS as a marketing tactic.[1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45666757

You're correct and the project isn't entitled to any good will or usage from the community either. So they get what they get, just like the community. Or you know, everyone can just give a shit about each other even if it's a bit more effort.

[dead]

You seem more entitled to your opinion than others.

> That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody.

Not everything is legally enforced. Open source is a social phenomenon. Why are you so surprised that these social rules are being enforced socially?

There are obligations... it's how society functions.

> I really don’t get this entitlement. “You are still doing unpaid work I benefit from, but you used to do more, therefore you are malicious.” is something I really cannot get behind.

I really don't get this entitlement. You expect that nobody should follow any social contracts and I'm sure are always surprised when people call you out for being asocial.

> I can't stand the entitlement people (everyone, not one particular person) feel when they are provided things for free.

Does it make you less frustrated to remember that humans are pattern recognition machines and our existence is essentially recognising and adapting to patterns, and so when someone does something repeatedly - regardless of if they're doing it for free - humans will recognise a pattern and adapt to it.

This is an inevitable consequence of coexisting with humans: if someone does something repeatedly, it creates an expectation. This is how learning works. If someone stops doing something, people are going to mention the consequences of their expectation not being met. Framing that as entitlement doesn't seem productive, especially in situations like this where it looks like the change wasn't properly communicated.

I don't think there can be a world where humans are able to learn/adapt/be efficient whilst not having expectations.

I believe there could be a world where people don't get pejoratively labelled as entitled for expressing the inconvenience caused by having functionality removed.

> There is absolutely nothing malicious or suspicious about deciding not to provide docker images or binaries. Doing so does not hide or guard you against CVE's, which are entirely unrelated to such optional processes.

Agree. But that's not my point. If you start an oss project from scratch and you don't want to provide builds that's fine.

If you start your oss project, provide public docker images since the beginning, start getting traction, create a commercial scheme for you to monetize the project and then suddenly make a rug pull on the public builds; that is indeed irresponsible, and borderline malicious when you do it without: 1. sufficient warning time. 2. after a recent cve.

Is it malicious? I don't know. I prefer to believe in Hanlon's razor. Is it irresponsible? 100% yes.

> Dealing with Docker themselves, the corporation that has famously gone on a tax collection spree, is however quite the pain in the arse for a company

so its a communications issue? if minio or whoever explains this, OK. that's not what happened, so it's not what happened.

If it were for a feature request, it would feel more justified. People feeling entitled to making feature requests is one thing. Like they can get fucked. Contribute code or pay me. But if I let something loose out into the world that suddenly started causing problems because someone discovered you could stab people with it, I'd be going around making sure all of the copies I gave out it had a knife guard put in place.

To me, there are two aspects:

- if you rely on something, you should make sure you can reasonably rely on it (indeed, for instance by paying someone)

- if you provide something, even for free, you should expect people will rely on it and you shouldn't pull the plug overnight if you can help it (of course, if you run out of business or something bad happens to you, that's something else). There is some kind of implicit commitment. Nobody should be entitled to receive free pre-built Docker images, but OTOH what's the point of even providing pre-built Docker images if you expect people not to rely on them? This feels pointless and you probably shouldn't start providing them in the first place if you have this expectation.

Rant about the concept of open source freeloaders: there's no such thing as open source freeloaders. If the license explicitly gives you the right to use the stuff for free, there's nothing wrong in using this right. While it would be the right thing to give money / otherwise support the projects you rely on, it's on the software developers who decide to give these rights (I also think it's the right thing to do though) to figure out the business model.

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.

Fork and build your own. Isn't that the whole open source ethos? Why it was invented and how it is intended to operate.

https://github.com/coollabsio/minio

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.

It also inconveniences people who aren't freeloaders - or are you forgetting about the community?

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?

I'm not scared at all and could care less about building the image myself.

I'm also not 'entitled' because i'm doing this for another open source project we are now maintaining.

Just to be clear: THEY already have to maintain the docker image and it makes it less secure for EVERYONE if the community now needs to either find a new github repo/company building it for them or everyone has to build it themselves because they do not trust random companies.

There is a difference between having the official Min.IO image with a stamp of approval vs. forked repos with their version of the same image. The only thing fixing this kind of issue is a fingerprint and build caches.

They are removing the official container images because 1. this is the magic source of running your software in helm charts etc. so now you need to act 2. in some companies you are not allowed to use random container images

And you are complelty ignoring my arguments. Its not entitlement if a companies product becomes the industry standard due to Open Source and then doing a rug pull like this.

I think (and I suspect many users would agree) that there is a big difference between "we are removing some unmaintained drivers for a piece of hardware which almost no one is using" and "we are removing a tentpole feature from the 'open-source' version of our application and making it exclusive to the paid edition".

> If you're not paying, you're not a customer - you're a user.

This doesn't work with open-source projects: someone can still provide a lot of value to you without explicitly paying for it. If a community member volunteers a lot of their time to contribute code or provide support to other users, then you probably shouldn't piss them off either.

Users have value even when they’re not paying.