After a long period of controversy that went against the principles of openness and left the open source community surprised, MinIO has effectively come to an end.
Its GitHub repository is now archived and read-only, which officially ends active open-source development of this widely used S3-compatible object storage server.
In the end, what many expected has happened. Community developers have created an independent fork to keep the open version of the software alive. It is available on GitHub under Pigsty’s account, which is an open-source platform for automated PostgreSQL deployment and operations.
“This is a community-maintained fork of minio/minio, maintained by Pigsty. This project is NOT affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MinIO, Inc. “MinIO” is a trademark of MinIO, Inc., used here solely to identify the upstream project.”
The fork maintains API compatibility with the original S3-compatible design and returns development to community control. Some key changes include:
- Restoration of the MinIO’s embedded management console version reference that had previously been removed.
- Adjusted module paths and build configuration to ensure long-term maintainability.
- Re-enabled packaging and container image distribution workflows.
- Continued public development under the existing AGPLv3 license.
MinIO’s documentation is mirrored at silo.pigsty.io, container images are published on Docker Hub, and the fork remains compatible with the original upstream mc CLI. In addition, Pigsty provides APT and YUM repositories for distributing the minio server and mcli binaries, ensuring users can deploy and update the software through standard Linux package management workflows.
After MinIO was discontinued, several alternatives became popular. The most notable options right now are Garage, SeaweedFS, and RustFS, which are worth considering as replacements for MinIO.
What happens next remains to be seen. Either way, current MinIO users who were caught off guard by the company’s sudden change in direction can breathe a sigh of relief, since this fork brings back what they had before.
The hope now is that more developers will join to provide timely security updates and, in the future, add new features and improve existing ones. Only time will tell, but taking this first step is already a big achievement.
