The latest Open Source drama came straight into the CNCF's hands. We haven’t seen such cases before: Synadia, the principal maintainer and original creator of NATS, a CNCF Incubating project, wants to get the ownership for this project back from the vendor-neutral home.

Synadia’s plan involved becoming the owner of the NATS project again and switching to the BSL license—which OSI does not consider Open Source—for future releases to ensure its business sustainability. However, CNCF insists there is no “way out” for the foundation's projects and suggests forking its repositories instead.

While Synadia is undoubtedly the leading developing force for NATS, the CNCF has helped the project thrive in many ways since its donation in 2018. In addition to the obvious marketing benefits, NATS also received funding for two third-party security audits and financial support for trademark legal expenses.

If Synadia stops contributing to NATS and there is not enough interest from other community members in developing a project, it might end up archived in the CNCF. The CNCF TOC has already started evaluating the health of this project.

Find more details about this story in the:
- original blog post by CNCF (posted on April 24th and updated on April 28th);
- official answer from Synadia (April 25th);
- Bluesky thread started by Joe Beda (posted on April 26th and answered by Derek Collison, founder and CEO @ Synadia);
- CNCF TOC issue regarding NATS health state.

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