Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
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Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#2[deleted]
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#3Very interesting.
NATS is really a great platform but I was always had my reservations regarding its viability as an open source project.
The end of the era of abundance in tech is really having an impact on open source.
The problem here is while one would obviously side with the CNCF taking action and fighting for the trademark, it doesn't really matter at the end. Either there are people willing to maintain the code or it will die as an open source project.
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#4Very interesting. NATS is really a great platform but I was always had my reservations regarding its viability as an open source project. The end of the era of abundance in tech is really having an impact on open source. The problem here is while one would obviously side with the CNCF taking action and fighting for the trademark, it doesn't really matter at the end. Either there are people willing to maintain the cod…
Die, how? It's a vibrant project with 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors:
https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go
Yes, the legal fight may end up permitting the clawback of the trademark, in which case the project will carry on under a different name and repo. But that's not death, that's fork.
The source is out of the bag under Apache 2.0 and there's no putting that back in the bottle.
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#5Very interesting. NATS is really a great platform but I was always had my reservations regarding its viability as an open source project. The end of the era of abundance in tech is really having an impact on open source. The problem here is while one would obviously side with the CNCF taking action and fighting for the trademark, it doesn't really matter at the end. Either there are people willing to maintain the cod…
Die, how? It's a vibrant project with 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go Yes, the legal fight may end up permitting the clawback of the trademark, in which case the project will carry on under a different name and repo. But that's not death, that's fork. The source is out of the bag under Apache 2.0 and there's no putting that back in the bottle.
> 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go
That's the NATS Go _client_.
The server project is https://github.com/nats-io/nats-server 17k stars, 1.5k forks, 160 contributors
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Die, how? It's a vibrant project with 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go Yes, the legal fight may end up permitting the clawback of the trademark, in which case the project will carry on under a different name and repo. But that's not death, that's fork. The source is out of the bag under Apache 2.0 and there's no putting that back in the bottle.
> 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go That's the NATS Go _client_. The server project is https://github.com/nats-io/nats-server 17k stars, 1.5k forks, 160 contributors
Good point!
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#7I just finished rearchitecting a core service at work to use NATS for distributed state. Really unsure about the viability of NATS as an open source product if Synadia stops contributing. It's making me reconsider our architecture change, maybe we should stick with a more stable (albeit less aligned) alternative.
summarising some context for folks;
From Synadia's Cease and Demand Letter:
> As should be clear, the NATS.io project has failed to thrive as a CNCF project, with essentially all growth of the project to date arising from Synadia’s efforts and at Synadia’s expense. It is for this reason that Synadia requests to end its relationship with the Foundation and receive full control of the nats.io domain name and Github repository within two weeks.
From Synadia's exit proposal:
> We propose that NATS.io exit from the CNCF Foundation effective immediately... Upon leaving CNCF, Synadia will adopt the Business Source License (BSL) for the NATS.io server... specific use cases (such as offering NATS as a managed service or integrating it into specific commercial offerings) will require a commercial license.
From CNCF's response:
> Let's be clear: this is not a typical license change or fork. It's an attempt to "take back" a mature, community-driven open source project and convert it into a proprietary product—after years of growth and collaboration under open governance and CNCF's stewardship.
Primary sources:
- Synadia's Cease and Demand Letter: https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/documents/nats/...
- Synadia's Exit Proposal: https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/documents/nats/...
- CNCF's Response: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/04/24/protecting-nats-and-the-...
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#8ugh... Yet another rug pull of beloved software that so many people have based their projects - and, in this case, entire architecture - on... Hopefully CNCF will prevail - most notably in creating a viable OSS team around it, as happened with Redis -> Valkey etc...
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 5.9k stars, 727 forks, 132 contributors: https://github.com/nats-io/nats.go That's the NATS Go _client_. The server project is https://github.com/nats-io/nats-server 17k stars, 1.5k forks, 160 contributors
Good point!
On the face of it, that sounds healthy. But dig in further, and you discover that only the top 10 or so contributors have enough activity to make their personal contribution graph anything other than a flat line on zero.
The vast majority of the work here is being done by a very small group of people - likely those paid by the commercial sponsor (a random sample of the top few suggest that well over half of those top contributors fall into that category).
If those people aren't paid to work on the project any more, it will likely die very quickly.
Re: Protecting NATS and the integrity of open source
#10I just finished rearchitecting a core service at work to use NATS for distributed state. Really unsure about the viability of NATS as an open source product if Synadia stops contributing. It's making me reconsider our architecture change, maybe we should stick with a more stable (albeit less aligned) alternative. summarising some context for folks; From Synadia's Cease and Demand Letter: > As should be clear, the NAT…
Thank you for pointing to those sources.
While I regret Synadia decision to change the license I have to admit just reading the CNCF reponse was very very misleading.
Ok Synadia says they were not happy with the CNCF collaboration. In the end they were paying for this membership and their services.
So I went and looked at the various member benefits and it doesn't sound really attracting to me [0] The most valuable thing seems to be in their "landscape". They are basically selling brand promotion.
Then you probably have a lot of politics dominated by their Platinium members: Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Boeing, IBM, Huawei, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, etc.
CNCF doesn't work for the community, they work for their (Platinium) members. Synadia works for its investors and they decided to change course (regrettably).
The code under Apache License 2.0 is available on the internet, if it is valuable some people will fork and maintain it. But it is not gonna be the CNCF and its staff.