Core developer Maxim Dounin left after F5 acquisition changed project direction.
Nginx is the world's most widely used web server, also functioning as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache. It powers a massive percentage of internet traffic and is a critical component of modern web infrastructure. Its event-driven, asynchronous architecture made it the go-to replacement for Apache in high-traffic scenarios.
Maxim Dounin is not just any Nginx contributor — he and one other developer (Roman) account for roughly 99% of Nginx's ongoing development. So when Dounin announced in February 2024 that he was forking the project, the web server community sat up and paid very close attention.
The backstory is a slow-motion corporate tragedy. Nginx was created by Igor Sysoev in 2004 and grew to become the world's most popular web server. Nginx, Inc. was acquired by F5 Networks in 2019 for $670 million. F5 closed its Moscow office in 2022 (amid geopolitical tensions), and Dounin — who had been one of the earliest employees — was left without a formal role. He continued maintaining Nginx as a volunteer under an informal agreement with F5.
That arrangement worked until F5's "new non-technical management" decided to override the project's longstanding security policy. Specifically, F5 forced a security release for bugs in experimental HTTP/3 code that, under existing policy, should have been treated as ordinary bugs. The developers unanimously disagreed. F5 ignored them. Dounin saw the writing on the wall: he could no longer control what changes went into Nginx, and he no longer considered it a "free and open source project developed for the public good."
Freenginx launched with its first release (1.25.4) under the same BSD license as Nginx. Dounin set up a read-only Mercurial repository and made clear this would be a developer-run project, free from corporate interference. The move was especially significant because Dounin possesses irreplaceable institutional knowledge of the Nginx codebase.
The fork underscores a recurring pattern: companies acquire open-source projects, install non-technical management, and then act surprised when the people who actually write the code walk out the door.
Igor Sysoev creates Nginx
F5 Networks acquires Nginx, Inc. for $670 million
F5 closes Moscow office; Dounin continues as volunteer maintainer
Maxim Dounin announces Freenginx on the nginx-devel mailing list
First release: Freenginx 1.25.4 under BSD license
“I'm starting an alternative project, which is going to be run by developers, and not corporate entities.”
Freenginx's impact is outsized relative to its modest profile because of who is behind it. With Maxim Dounin carrying virtually all the institutional knowledge of Nginx's internals, the fork represents a credible alternative that many Linux distributions and infrastructure projects may adopt over time.
The fork also sent a clear message to the industry about the risks of acquiring open-source projects and then overriding technical decisions with corporate mandates. When your entire development capacity walks out the door and starts a competitor, the acquisition's value evaporates rapidly.