Can Open Source Projects Exit Foundations?

Summary

Last month, Synadia threatened to pull NATS from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), moving from the Apache 2.0 license to a non-open source license. While the dispute lasted only a few days, with both Synadia and CNCF agreeing that the project remains in the open source ecosystem, the dispute left many concerned about the long-term availability and support of open source projects. NATS is an open source messaging system that enables secure, high-performance, and scalable communication between distributed systems and services. After developing and maintaining the project under the Apache 2.0 license for many years, and donating it to the CNCF in 2018, Synadia announced last month its plan to withdraw the NATS server from the foundation and adopt the Business Source License (BUSL), a non-open source license. Derek Collison, creator of NATS.io and CEO of Synadia, wrote: For the NATS ecosystem to flourish, Synadia must also thrive. This clarity has guided our decision-making and planning (...) Synadia’s customers, partners, and the broader NATS ecosystem derive tremendous value from the features and capabilities of the NATS server. Synadia and its predecessor company funded approximately 97% of the NATS server contributions. While a discussion about the future of the project was taking place in the CNCF TOC repository, the foundation explained why the open source commitments and principles were under threat and disputed the ownership of the NATS trademark, sparking concerns about the future of the popular project. Foundation-backed open source software has traditionally offered greater stability than corporate-owned projects, making NATS' potential departure from CNCF a significant exception. After a few days of discussions and updates, Synadia and the CNCF announced on May 1st that they had reached an agreement: Synadia would transfer the NATS trademark registrations to the Linux Foundation, without forking the project, while the CNCF would retain control ov...