The developers of MinIO, an Amazon S3-compatible, high-performance object store with over a billion downloads on Docker Hub, have moved the project’s Git repository to archive mode allowing read-only access. The last change to the repository was adding a note about the end of maintenance and recommendations to switch to a proprietary product MinIO AIStor. Archiving was the final step in a series of events that were perceived by the community as an imitation of openness (Openwashing – using the reputation of a free project to promote a proprietary product).
In the spring of 2025, in the Community edition of MinIO, without prior warning from the web console, administration functionality has been removed and only the interface for navigating through objects is left. To manage storage, access and users, it was proposed to use the command line interface or the commercial version of AIStor Enterprise, cost from 96 thousand dollars per year. In October 2025, stopped publication of ready-made container images on Docker Hub, and this coincided with the disclosure of vulnerability, allowed for privilege escalation. In December 2025, the project was transferred to maintenance mode, which meant adding only fixes for critical vulnerabilities to the open code base. Changes related to new functionality and bug fixes began to be made only to the commercial version.