MinIO has accused Nutanix of actively misleading industry and financial analysts by telling them it was no longer using MinIO code in its Objects product when in fact it was, or so it’s claimed.
MinIO CFO Garima Kapoor followed up her first blog accusing Nutanix of open source code license infractions with a second. In this post, she rejected Nutanix’s apology as not enough, saying: “The Nutanix blog claims the notice failure was ‘inadvertent.’ We informed Nutanix in December of 2019 that they were lacking the appropriate attribution.”
Kapoor claims that, as Nutanix misled the analyst community about its use of MinIO code, “This allowed them to participate in things like the Gartner Magic Quadrant, IDC Marketscape and GigaOm Radar – evaluations they would have otherwise been excluded from.”
She asserts that “something doesn’t add up” as “Nutanix claims that they only use ‘a limited set of MinIO components’ which is ‘just non-data path components.’ We would ask the following: if their usage is limited to just a few components, why is the entire MinIO binary present in the Nutanix Objects code? If the ‘limited set of MinIO components’ is so small, why not just remove them?”
Kapoor hammers home this particular point: “MinIO has revoked the license to Nutanix. We did so on July 19. We fully expect that the entirety of the binary including the ‘limited set of MinIO components’ will be removed from the Nutanix Objects code completely. Until then, Nutanix should not distribute any Objects product containing our code.”
And: “Furthermore, Nutanix customers should know that their existing code is unlicensed and they should check their indemnification clauses. Nutanix customers should also check their security exposure.”
And again: “We are committed to defending the open source model. We fully expect that Nutanix will comply with the request to remove all MinIO software from their products.”
It appears MinIO wants Nutanix to stop distributing its code, rather than just accept its apology. Is there no way out of this for Nutanix that’s acceptable to MinIO and lets Nutanix users enjoy the benefits of MinIO’s code?
We contacted Nutanix for comment. Its spokespeople referred us to its previous statement on the matter, and has so far declined to respond further.
Bootnote
Research house Coldago Coldago did not mention Nutanix in its Map for Object Storage as one of its criteria is the ownership of the software. Nutanix is not listed in Coldago’s object storage timeline.
