Also relevant CNCF blog post: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/04/24/protecting-nats-and-the-integrity-of-open-source-cncfs-commitment-to-the-community/

From the CNCF wasmCloud maintainers:
https://wasmcloud.com/blog/2025-04-23-statement-on-nats/

We are committed to the open-source community, foundation membership, and participation in the CNCF.

Words fail me as to how disappointed I am with Synadia.

When discussing NATS with others, I always described Synadia as a company that "got it".

NATS was made freely open to the community via CNCF, with a great community spirit in the associated YouTube posts, NBE (NATS By Example) and the Slack group.

It was always clear to me and others that there was always some "secret sauce" mostly relating to monitoring, management and support that you could only get if you went commercial with Synadia. And that was just fine for me and others. And the impression we got was that Synadia was happy with that monetization route.

But it was always clear that the underlying NATS was line-for-line the same and there was no two-tier open vs closed feature mentality that you see in other projects such as CockroachDB or others. I fear that is now going to change.

I was about to roll-out a NATS project but am now scrapping it and actively looking to strip NATS out of all existing deployments.

We are in the same situation. About to roll out NATS to production at scale in replacement to our existing queueing/streaming mechanisms but I'll hold up a bit to see the wind direction.

I've contributed to NATS myself and hear someone calling "a failure to achieve objectives" the CNCF and OSS efforts, is frustrating to say the least.

Here is our formal response.

https://www.synadia.com/blog/synadia-response-to-cncf

I appreciate all Synadia has done to grow the project. Thank you for creating a great project. It really is an impressive piece of software. However it is no longer Syndia's to relicense. I look forward to seeing the Synadia fork of the project.

We had no intention of relicensing the NATS code base, and we explicitly said that during our conversations with the CNCF. Since the CNCF is apparently experiencing issues with other projects and re-licensing, Chris asked me. I was very clear that it would be server only and that their would always be an AP2 version of the server, and clients would continue to be AP2.

I do feel strongly that projects like NATS, that are funded and grown by a single company, do not fit well into the current CNCF's view of projects.

However it is no longer Syndia's to relicense

trademark/logo != copyright

CNCF does not require that copyright be transferred when a project joins.

I'm sure that Synadia has kept track of who The NATS Authors are and will get permission from them to relicense.

That is true, and to be crystal clear, we are only considering the server and that does not mean there would not be an AP2 version of the server.

I found myself reading a rather interesting 2020 email from Mr Collison today (https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4965)

He cites:

End user concerns around risk

1. Can I continue to use the software as I see fit (no license changes).

To which he self-answers:

We have # 1 covered

Somewhat interesting that it was always clearly recognised that users don't like being ambushed by license changes. 😆

There is also an interesting 2020 email from the CNCF side on the single-maintainer risk (https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4500)

I've also discussed this at length with the NATS folks. I'll repeat the essence of the conversation here. I don't think it's about being 100% risk-free. But let's face it, if only one organization is de-facto maintaining a project, and that organization decides to no longer do so (of simply ceases to exist), then users of the project may find themselves in a bad situation. Given that this sort of thing happens a lot (organizations changing strategy and which projects they fund, and startups disappearing) the chances of this happening are high. The intention of requiring more than one maintainer org, is primarily to bring that probability down significantly.

So, if I read it correctly, what has happened today is pretty much EXACTLY what CNCF were worried about re: Synadia, NATS and the graduation application.

FYI: CNCF made a set of small updates to the original blog post with more detailed information https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/04/24/protecting-nats-and-the-integrity-of-open-source-cncfs-commitment-to-the-community/

I'm heartened to see signs of de-escalation in the Synadia–CNCF situation. Recent developments suggest a move towards resolution, which is encouraging for the community. For those interested in more context, here's a relevant article:

Synadia backs down from CNCF trademark dispute

Wishing all parties the best in reaching an amicable outcome that supports the health and sustainability of the NATS ecosystem.

Metta, Karuna, Mudita, Upekka

Tim

@unixneo that article shows a pro-Synadia bias.

In that interview, Derek Collison rolls out the worlds tiniest violin:

That brand has been my full commitment for the last 15 years of my life, I put my heart, sweat and tears into both the technology and the branding itself

The same person who said elsewhere (in a Redmonk interview)

the CNCF was this could help us with our awareness issue. So we don’t have to spend all these marketing dollars and try to get the awareness out.

The more I read, the more firmly I agree with the CNCF side of the story.

CNCF should keep the trademark and the assets. Synadia can go do their thing under a different name, "fork off" as The Register nicely put it !

The joint announcement from CNCF and Synadia about the future of NATS project seems pertinent to share here as well.

Thanks for posting @joonas

I guess the key paragraph is this one:

Like all members of the community, Synadia is also free to pursue its own commercial interests by building on top of the open source NATS project. As with any open source codebase, if Synadia chooses to fork the NATS server code for a proprietary offering in the future, it will do so under a new name.

So basically effectively going back to the way things were before all the stupid "we've voted, give us back the code and name" shenanigans ?

So basically all this nonsense could have been avoided if Synadia simply sat round the table with CNCF ?

I'm glad common sense prevailed in the Synadia offices. 😆

(Although the devil is in the detail, so I look forward to the final outcome, not just a press release)

Folks, the community AMA will be held on Wed - May 7th at 11a ET / 8a PT / 4p UK
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2223334222?omn=88121261478

@derekcollison Please confirm the meeting will be recorded, not everyone will be available on the day, either due to other commitments or practicalities such as timezones.

Project health review meeting: NATS project continuing to meet with the CNCF, CNCF will give an update when open issues are closed out.

Recent activity.