It (nginx) is bsd licensed. If you don't like the development model, you can always fork it on github, or start a company that develops and supports a closed-source fork.
Not to mention that Cherokee's configuration file format is very human-unfriendly, and its configuration utility is a GUI that requires a web browser (and port forwarding if you want to configure a server remotely, which would typically be the case outside of dev environments).
Let's say Cherokee does not force you to deal with text based, error prone configuration files. Not mention that it allows you to configure your web server safely without the need to learning an additional custom grammar.
Linus Torvalds said in 2001 he didn't use a bug tracker for the Linux kernel so I'm not sure if I should be worried.
Apache, nginx and Cherokee also work on Haiku as well as a bunch of other native ones (e.g. PoorMan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PoorMan and RobinHood). nginx fits well with it because Haiku performs well under heavy load for responsiveness, is lightweight and fast.
Dont get me wrong, I have several production sites on nginx - but the development methodology makes me very nervous.
Cherokee has some of the same objectives as nginx (fast and lightweight) and has a very open development process.
Plus, the Cherokee Market is very cool (http://cherokee-market.com/) !