Nginx Takes The Slippery Road Away From Open Source

The popular upstart Web server released a proprietary Plus version this week. What could possibly go wrong?

Riding the wave of its broad adoption, the eponymous company behind the open source Nginx Web server took a turn to the proprietary this week and announced a paid-only edition called Nginx plus. Nginx is popular as a simpler, high-performance server and is often used as a proxy load balancing other server software, as well as for embedded use.

The company had previously relied for revenue on large-scale and embedded deployers looking for expert skills, but this move signals a switch to an "open core" model. The move provoked widespread dismay in the free and open source software communities; Apache HTTPD veteran and Apache board member Jim Jagielski's comment deducing the proprietary is now the most important codebase for the company was one of the milder examples.