Inquiry on the Future Direction of Freenginx

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

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On Sun, Aug 11, 2024 at 09:16:05PM +0900, Tatsuya Kaneko wrote:

> Thank you for developing Freenginx. I have some questions about its
> future direction.
> 
> Do you want developers who currently use Nginx to switch to Freenginx?
> 
> If so, I believe the following features are necessary:
> 
> * Compelling features that encourage developers to choose Freenginx
> * A Docker image
> 
> Many developers are satisfied with Nginx, so Freenginx needs features
> that stand out. For example, I would be interested in a feature that
> updates upstream via DNS. While this is possible with variables, it
> doesn't support keepalive connections with upstream. If Freenginx
> could offer this feature, many developers might choose it.

Certainly features are important, and almost every release of 
freenginx adds new features.

As of now, important ones include better DoS protection in various 
areas (such as max_commands in mail proxy, max_headers, limits 
during request headers and body reading), error logging 
moderation, OAUTH authentication mechanisms in mail proxy, and a 
large cleanup of request body error handling which makes various 
complex error_page configurations a lot easier.

Still, I tend to think that "developers are satisfied" isn't 
something to be taken as granted.  Rather, this is a result of 
many years of work on the quality of the code.  And it's an open 
question now if F5 will be able to maintain the quality of their 
code.

> Additionally, many developers, including myself, use Docker images.
> Since there is no Docker image for Freenginx, it’s not currently an
> option for us.
> 
> So, if Freenginx has compelling features and a Docker image, I believe
> many developers would choose it. Is this something you want?

I personally don't use Docker much, mostly for testing with 
various Linux userlands.  Do you think that a special Docker image 
is required?  My personal impression is that it is something 
better achieved with a package in/for a particular distribution.

-- 
Maxim Dounin
http://mdounin.ru/