[boyter]

From the release notes http://varnish.org/docs/5.0/whats-new/relnote-5.0.html "It is important that people understand that Free and Open Source Software isn't the same as gratis software: Somebody has to pay the developers mortgages and student loans."

Varnish is an excellent piece of software, but I thought it was totally funded by the commercial side varnish software. How does this model work? It seems odd to ask for donations while also selling an expensive supported version?

[phkamp]

Varnish Cache Author here.

The Varnish Cache FOSS project and Varnish Software the company are two entirely different things.

By and large, the Varnish Cache FOSS project is me, and I am not employed by Varnish Software: I have my own one-man company where I "make computers to do weird things".

The time I spend on Varnish Cache is funded by "The Varnish Moral License":

http://phk.freebsd.dk/VML/index.html

(See also: http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2636165)

Varnish Software is one of the handful of companies who pay via the VML to keep me working on Varnish.

Varnish Software has also supported the project in many other ways as well, from running the project server to donating manpower and source code.

Some of these things are being scaled down, for instance the project server had become the square peg in their round internal IT systems, so I have been migrating that off to a server kindly sponsored by RootBSD.

[boyter]

Thanks so much for replying. I did notice the Moral License and was confused as to how it works. I will attempt to get some high profile users I know to help pay for some continued development.

[qeternity]

"Until now Varnish Software has done a lot of work for the Varnish Cache project, but for totally valid reasons, they are scaling that back and the project either needs to pick up the slack or drop some of those activities."

Why they are pulling back is anybody's guess. But it sounds like they are focusing on monetizing the existing codebase instead of further developing it.