[Xylakant]

> Who says they won't do that?

Well, they seem to have no stance on that - at least there's nothing on the page. So I tend to assume that pro features remain pro features.

Nobody is demanding that the nginx folks provide value for free. However, I see problems with their chosen business model. The separation of "open source" vs. "closed source" is ill defined. What happens for example if some other party implements a solution that provides the same functionality as a pro feature? Would they accept a PR for that and then provide it as part of the free version or would they just keep the pro-approved version and let the OS-version play catch up? Is it possible to patch the pro version as it is possible to patch the os version? Syslog logging requires source patches atm and it doesn't look like the patch will ever be accepted in the mainline. There's a legal question as well: From the changelog it seems as if other people contributed patches - the implied idea is that they provided patches to an OS project, did they sign a CLA that says they're transferring all rights to the nginx company?

Don't get me wrong: It's fair and square the authors want to make money of their project and they're certainly entitled to. I just see a bunch of issues cropping up.

[lambada]

On the legal question:

As of writing, the Contributing page states: "License

Submitting changes implies granting project a permission to use it under an appropriate license."[0] "license" links to [1] which states (in part):

" * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions * are met: * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright * notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the * documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. " followed by standard liability disclaimer.

There may well be a problem agreeing what "appropriate" means. There's an argument that given the link, appropriate could mean a license that allows redistribution in the same way as the current license - which would raise interesting questions for redistributing the nginx plus version.

Certainly it's not a simple assignation of copyright to NGINX. I can easily imagine a lawyer having a heart-attack when reading the original conditions of submitting.

[0] http://nginx.org/en/docs/contributing_changes.html [1] http://nginx.org/LICENSE

[Xylakant]

That's my point: Without CLA there's enough wiggle room for several armies of lawyers to squeeze through and attack you like a flock of piranhas. The other problem is that contributors might feel cheated - the implied contract was that they contribute to an OS project, not help lift a commercial project off the ground. OTOH, I have no idea how big outside contribution was. It's certainly a little shaky with a lot of pitfalls and I certainly don't hope that anyone feels inclined to challenge the commercial version, but we've all seen how well that went with VLC and the app-store version :(

[traskjd]

All valid questions and certainly going to be food for thought of the team involved. Hopefully they see your concerns here and address them somewhere.