Comment by crote

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?