Core NGINX Developer Forks Web Server Into Freenginx

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Core NGINX Developer Forks Web Server Into Freenginx

Maxim Dounin as one of the longtime core developers of the Nginx web server announced the creation today of a new fork of the project called Freenginx...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Nginx-Forked-To-Freenginx

[mathletic]

How can Maxim expect F5 to accept his new name and logo? Isn't ngix trademarked?

[Kjell]

Works for free to make bags for a company..?

This change was long overdue

[Kjell]

Email lists in 2024? Hopefully there will be a proper git repo soon..

[Garp]

Posts on HackerNews from someone who says they work for F5, suggests this is down to F5 allocating CVEs to security bugs, and Maxim not wanting that to happen, with some nuance around the features with the security bugs being experimental in nature.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39374327

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39374312

I'll be honest, I bias towards F5 on this one. They're a CNA meaning they create and manage CVEs related to their products. If they've been shipping software with vulnerabilities in it, that they've been made aware of, *even* if it's in experimental code, there really should be CVEs linked to it, that they create and publish.

[bug77]

How can Maxim expect F5 to accept his new name and logo? Isn't ngix trademarked?

He says he's based in Moscow. Good luck enforcing a trademark over there...

Also, assigning CVEs to bugs in experimental branches... that's a little out there.

[scratchi]

Nice!!

[Garp]

He says he's based in Moscow. Good luck enforcing a trademark over there...

Also, assigning CVEs to bugs in experimental branches... that's a little out there.

It doesn't read like it's an experimental branch, just experimental code being shipped that isn't enabled by default when you compile. Pass the right flags to ./configure (or whatever tool they're using) and you'd have that vulnerable code running.

[Artim]

Let's see how this will develop. I'm fine staying right here on the stable version. Worst case I'll move back to the version from the Debian repo. I very much doubt they would keep nginx in the repos if F5 was doing bad things. And if freenginx does have anything going for it, they would probably offer it as an alternative, maybe even convert nginx into a transitional package for it if it comes down to it. Too many people are relying on nginx and not everyone would be able or willing to switch to Apache, lighttp or whatever. But only time will tell.

[eomanis]

Too many people are relying on nginx and not everyone would be able or willing to switch to Apache, lighttp or whatever. But only time will tell.

Well I have one data point for you, I switched from nginx to Caddy last year because I really wanted that sweet sweet HTTP/3 which nginx took their good time to implement and I was tired of waiting 💁