[pritambaral]

> the directive I'm trying to configure is only available in the paid plan

Sadly, this is how the developers of nginx can earn and continue to make good software. Some of the new features in this release has been directly supported by the commercial edition, and some has been open sourced after being made for the commercial edition because clients demanded them.

Also, the nginx team is open to a feature being sponsored by a third-party, non-client in order to add it to the open source edition. Some of the significant features in nginx have been built this way (http/2, spdy, websocket support etc.)

If nothing, even patching or writing modules for nginx is not that hard (assuming you know how to develop, and in C). It is one of the more well-designed codebases. (Some others are: Redis, Postgres, Git).

> there really should be separate docs for the open source vs paid plan

I thought nginx.org contained only open-source info, save for an occasional ad about the paid offering. Is there any documentation on nginx.org that doesn't apply to the open source edition?

[Maxious]

http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html

"Dynamically configurable group, available as part of our commercial subscription:"

"Additionally, the following parameters are available as part of our commercial subscription:"

"This directive is available as part of our commercial subscription."

[emgee3]

I may not have been clear, but I understand and fully support their right to charge for software and services. I just haven't worked on any projects for which their prices fit in to the calculation.

As to documentation on nginx.org that doesn't apply to the open source edition, see http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_upstream_module.html#... -- there are quite a few more, that's just the last one I tried to use.