Core NGINX Developer Forks Web Server Into Freenginx
Maxim Dounin decided to fork Nginx follow a disagreement with F5, the organization that acquired the Nginx company in 2019. Dounin explained in announcing Freenginx:
"As you probably know, F5 closed Moscow office in 2022, and I no longer work for F5 since then. Still, we’ve reached an agreement that I will maintain my role in nginx development as a volunteer. And for almost two years I was working on improving nginx and making it better for everyone, for free.
Unfortunately, some new non-technical management at F5 recently decided that they know better how to run open source projects. In particular, they decided to interfere with security policy nginx uses for years, ignoring both the policy and developers’ position.
That’s quite understandable: they own the project, and can do anything with it, including doing marketing-motivated actions, ignoring developers position and community. Still, this contradicts our agreement. And, more importantly, I no longer able to control which changes are made in nginx within F5, and no longer see nginx as a free and open source project developed and maintained for the public good.
As such, starting from today, I will no longer participate in nginx development as run by F5. Instead, I’m starting an alternative project, which is going to be run by developers, and not corporate entities:
http://freenginx.org/
The goal is to keep nginx development free from arbitrary corporate actions. Help and contributions are welcome. Hope it will be beneficial for everyone."
Over on freenginx.org the brief statement reads:
"The freenginx.org project. The goal of the project is to keep nginx development free from arbitrary corporate actions."
It will be interesting to see what comes of Freenginx and how many other developers may decide to focus on this new fork instead.
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