announcing freenginx.org

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 12:59 PM Maxim Dounin <mdounin at mdounin.ru> wrote:
>
> 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.

Thanks for all the hard work, Maxim.

There's a Request for Packaging for freenginx over at Debian at
<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1063916>. Hopefully
someone will pick it up quickly.

Jeff