[HEALTH]: NATS

[caniszczyk]

Project name

nats

Concern

There are health concerns around the NATS project that require review and discussion:

• Some NATS maintainers are interested in leaving CNCF which would mean archival of the project: https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/documents/nats/NATS.io%20Maintainer%20Minutes%20-%20March%202025.pdf
• A single vendor unfortunately wants to re-license and take control of the project: https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/documents/nats/Proposal%20to%20exit%20NATS%20from%20CNCF.pdf https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/documents/nats/Cease%20and%20Demand%20Letter%20from%20Synadia%20Counsel.pdf

The project may need some deeper governance review/improvements, a call for broader maintainership and more. From my POV outside of the legal circumstances above that CNCF leadership is managing, this reminds me of the time Cortex was forked by a single vendor into a new project with a lot of maintainers moving to the new project under a new name, we had a call in CNCF for additional maintainers and it worked out in the end: https://grafana.com/blog/2022/03/30/qa-with-our-ceo-about-grafana-mimir/

Prior engagement

No response

Additional Information

https://github.com/cncf/foundation/tree/main/documents/nats

[caniszczyk]

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/

[LiamRandall]

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.

[udf2457]

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.

[galvesribeiro]

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.

[derekcollison]

Here is our formal response.

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

[stmcginnis]

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.

[derekcollison]

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.

[lukebakken]

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.

[derekcollison]

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.