Nginx ‘forks’: core developers announce creation of FreeNginx

Nearly, Maxim Dounin, the core developer of Nginx, the world's most popular web server, announced the launch of a forked version of FreeNginx.

Nginx is now used on about one-third of the world's web servers and was previously owned by Nginx Corporation; in March 2019, Nginx was acquired by F5 Inc. for $670 million.

However Maxim Dounin, the main developer of the Nginx web server system, had a disagreement with F5 and decided to fork Nginx to create FreeNginx.

Dounin explains that, as you may know, F5 closed its Moscow office in 2022, and I have not worked for F5 since then.

However, we have come to an agreement that I will continue to be involved in Nginx development as a volunteer, and for the last two years I have been working on improving Nginx and providing a better service for free.

Unfortunately, some of the new non-technical management at F5 have recently decided that they need to know more about how to run open source projects, and in particular they have decided to interfere with the security policy that Nginx has used for years, ignoring both the policy and the developers' position.

This is understandable: they own the project and can do anything with it, including for marketing purposes, ignoring the developers' position and the community.

Nonetheless, this is a breach of our agreement, and more importantly, I can no longer control the modifications made to Nginx within F5, and I can no longer view Nginx as a free open source project developed and maintained for the public good.

Therefore, as of today, I will no longer be involved in the development of Nginx under the responsibility of F5, and in its place, I will be starting another project that will be run by developers rather than a corporate entity.

The goal is to insulate Nginx development from arbitrary corporate behavior, and hopefully everyone will benefit from this.