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 over the project's infrastructure and assets. If Synadia chooses to fork the project for a proprietary offering in the future, it will have to do so under a new name.
In the article "OSS: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst and cofounder at RedMonk, writes:
The flareup starkly revealed traditional fault lines in the wider open source community around the role of foundations. For many, this situation provided an opportunity not to protest the alleged about face but rather to attack foundations generally and the CNCF specifically for their shortcomings, both perceived and real (...) Vendors that choose to donate projects to foundations do so understanding, or at least should, that donation is a one way door.
Discussing "NATS goes Nuts – Quite Unique Open Source controversy," Peter Zaitsev, founder of Percona and open source advocate, adds:
There’s a lesson here for the CNCF too. If it wants people to trust the projects it hosts, it needs to make sure situations like this don’t happen. That means locking down all the key assets -like trademarks and licensing rights- before fully accepting a project.
Discussing the future of Synadia and the NATS project after the agreement was reached, Collison explained how Synadia is now considering a commercial distribution that would embed the OSS NATS Server targeted for specific use cases, with the company still providing commercial support for the open source solution. O'Grady concludes:
The NATS storm was a black eye for open source broadly. Between the simmering antagonism towards foundations at scale, the direct attacks on the CNCF specifically and the revelations about NATS’ performance and Synadia’s alleged behaviors, it was not a great week for open source.
Seven years after joining the CNCF, NATS has yet to achieve "graduated" status and continues to operate under the "incubating" designation, one of the factors that contributed to the dispute.