What VaultS3 will never do

I built this because MinIO moved features I was already using behind a paid tier. So here is what I am committing to, in public, with a date on it.

The canonical version of this lives in the README in the repository, not on this page. It is in git, so every change to it is in the history and anyone can check that it has not been quietly rewritten.

• Nothing that is free today ever moves behind a paid tier.

  Not the dashboard, not clustering, not erasure coding, not encryption, not versioning, not search. If it is in the box now, it stays in the box.

• The core stays AGPL-3.0.

  It does not get relicensed to something proprietary.

• No telemetry.

  VaultS3 never phones home. There is nothing to switch off, because there is nothing there to begin with.

• No account to download, and no licence key to run the server.

  You do not trade an email address for a binary, and nothing checks a key at the worst possible moment.

• A public advisory for every security fix.

  Including the embarrassing ones.

What is commercial, so this is not evasive

There are paid add-ons for organisations running VaultS3 at scale, listed on the enterprise page: a multi-cluster Fleet Console, a Kubernetes Operator, a multi-tenant Gateway and a Compliance Pack. They solve problems a single server does not have, they are built as separate programs that talk to the core over its API, and they are how this project gets funded.

That is the arrangement, stated plainly: the storage engine is free and stays free, and I sell tools around it. New paid products may be built. Nothing is ever removed from the core to create one.

On the CLA

Contributors sign a CLA, which means I hold enough copyright to relicense the core if I chose to. I am telling you that rather than hoping you do not check. The first promise on this list is the one that matters, and it is the one to hold me to.

If ownership ever changes

These promises are mine. If I ever transfer VaultS3 to someone else, I will say so publicly and in advance, and I will not pretend my promises bind a new owner. You would get to make your own decision with notice, which is more than I got.

Last updated 23 August 2026.