Warning: File ... owner is not root. Future versions will refuse to load this file. But if I chown root, mosquitto doesn't start anymore.

[h0ryz0n]

VM with Alpine 3.18.4, kernel 6.1.58-0-virt
mosquitto version 2.0.18

mosquitto actually works, but when I add/change some user with mosquitto_passwd, it works as expected, but gives me a
Warning: File /etc/mosquitto/pwfile owner is not root. Future versions will refuse to load this file.To fix this, use chown root /etc/mosquitto/pwfile

password file is actually:
-rw------- 1 mosquitt mosquitt 380 Oct 16 16:18 pwfile

if I actually change owner
-rw------- 1 root root 380 Oct 16 16:18 pwfile

mosquitto doesn't start because
daemon.err mosquitto[2570]: 1697470558: Error: Unable to open pwfile "/etc/mosquitto/pwfile".
daemon.err mosquitto[2570]: 1697470558: Error opening password file "/etc/mosquitto/pwfile".

but the daemon actually does start with 'mosquitto' user privileges, so won't have access to the pwfile unless it's owned by mosquitto or world readable (but then, it's like #2890).
how to get rid of this warning?