At WEKA, we pride ourselves on delivering leading-edge innovation that delights our customers and partners and engaging in a fair fight in the marketplace where the best technology wins. We believe in taking the high road when our competitors throw punches, focusing on innovation and customer satisfaction, and keeping out of public spats.

This is why we are deeply disappointed by the unprovoked and very public attack made by MinIO, an industry peer that WEKA has always held respect for, and we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of having to respond to what appears to be a case of carefully timed and deliberate defamation.

This is our statement and response to those allegations:

At the end of the business day on Friday, March 24th – without warning, provocation, or even providing WEKA with an opportunity to review and respond to their claims – MinIO issued a public statement that made several false and baseless accusations against WEKA. It was the first time MinIO had made us aware of their concerns.

Chief among them, MinIO alleged that WEKA is not in compliance with the terms of our Apache 2.0 license of its MinIO Open Source software and stated that it was revoking our licenses.

We’re here to set the record straight: Our customers and partners can be assured that WEKA’s Apache 2.0 licenses are still fully valid, in full effect – and are irrevocable.

For the reasons outlined here, MinIO’s claims are false and baseless:

1. WEKA fully complies with Apache 2.0 notice and attribution requirements.

As stipulated by the notice and attribution provisions of the Apache 2.0 license, copyright notices must be given to any recipients of open-source materials. WEKA has been and continues to be fully compliant with these provisions. Accordingly, we provide the following copyright notice to all WEKA customers and partners, which clearly provides the appropriate attribution to MinIO for the Apache 2.0 license:

In addition to making this notice publicly accessible on our website, we also reference it in WEKA’s software end-user license agreement (EULA), in the WEKA software graphical user interface (GUI), in the WEKA command line interface (CLI), and in our WEKA customer support web portal – in complete compliance with the Apache 2.0 attribution requirements.

2. MinIO has no authority – or ability – to revoke WEKA’s Apache 2.0 license

In a review of the terms of the Apache 2.0 license, it is made very clear that the license is irrevocable:

– In the Grant of Copyright License (Section 2 in the license terms), each open-source contributor grants a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.”

The written terms of the Apache 2.0 license agreement are clear: MinIO cannot revoke WEKA’s license.

3. WEKA software only uses MinIO Open Source software licensed under Apache 2.0.

We can confirm that all code forked by WEKA has been derived exclusively from Apache 2.0 licensed code – no MinIO code subject to the AGPL v3 license has ever been used in WEKA’s software. Therefore, only the terms of the Apache 2.0 license apply.

As shown above, MinIO’s allegations that WEKA is out of compliance with the terms of its Apache 2.0 open-source license are entirely baseless and false – and MinIO cannot revoke WEKA’s Apache 2.0 license.

WEKA takes all intellectual property, including open source, very seriously. Although their motivations remain unclear, we believe the baseless allegations made by MinIO amount to nothing more than a reckless publicity stunt and an unprovoked attempt to cause harm to WEKA.

Their actions have also caused unnecessary concern for our customers and partners. We want to reassure them again that MinIO’s claims are without merit and that WEKA’s Apache 2.0 licenses remain valid and in full effect.