16 ms·

Police conducted search in the Nginx office due to a copyright claim

586 points by ameshkov 7y ago

ameshkov 7y ago
Igor Sysoev developed Nginx while working in Rambler (a Russian search engine) back in 2002-2004. Now, 15 years later, Rambler filed a copyright claim against Nginx and Igor, and demands (allegedly) 51M RUB from them.
- duelingjello 7y ago
  I think the statue of limitations in Russia is under 10 years for most civil claims. Maybe someone can clarify what are the actual charges and what would the statute of limitations be? If statute of limitations ran out, maybe the corporate lawyer can get this thrown out quickly?
  - ma2rten 7y ago
    I don't think it works like that. The supposed copyright violation is ongoing.
    - chupasaurus 7y ago
      I should remind you that there was a 1:342 ratio of "Not guilty" to "Guilty" decisions on the criminal cases in Russia last year, and the it's declining year-to-year.
      - Corazoor 7y ago
        I was interested in the ratio for the US, which based on a quick lookup seems to be 1:249 for federal cases... (Numbers taken from here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-federal-criminal-defendants-go-to-trial-and-most-who-do-are-found-guilty/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...) Just wanted to note that it is not a very good way to gauge opressiveness or fairness... In a perfect world, charges would only ever be brought against the guilty, and only the guilty would be found as such by court. In such a World the ratio would be 0:<division by zero error>...
        chupasaurus 7y ago
        The corruption in judicial circles of Russia works this way: the police had opened the case, the defendant obviously isn't guilty, we state that he's guilty with a penalty of conditional term instead of a real one and free him in a court's room. If we state that he isn't guilty, then it would start the process of quality check in all parties involved in the development of the case which unavoidably ends with penalties or criminal cases upon the policemen, nah we don't need that. I agree on a perfect world scenario, but we in Russia have a big pile of ridiculous court decisions every month.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        > Just wanted to note that it is not a very good way to gauge oppressiveness or fairness I would point out that the conviction ratio of the US is indicative of massive flaws in the powers that DAs have in most jurisdictions to force time limited plea agreements on defendants who have limited information and are under threat of charges with much higher penalties. This can usually be done without any oversight or approval from judges. > In a perfect world, charges would only ever be brought against the guilty, and only the guilty would be found as such by court. In such a World the ratio would be 0:<division by zero error>... That sounds like a world with complete surveillance, no privacy and a judicial system with absolute power. Doesn't sound like a perfect world to me.
  - kelvich 7y ago
    > what would the statute of limitations be It is usually 3 years for such cases, but it counts since the moment of time when alleged infringement was discovered.
- tssva 7y ago
  To save anyone else having to look it up. 51M RUB is currently around US $810k.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Somewhat surprised this hasn't settled out of court then.
    - eps 7y ago
      I'd be surprised if it had been. I'd wager Rambler is after the ngnix itself rather than some cash.
      - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
        But even if they "owned" nginx - what does it get them? The community would immediately fork it and change the branding. The same happened to MySQL when Sun was bought by Oracle when MariaDB was forked - though I concede MariaDB isn't as popular as I hoped.
        jsty 7y ago
        If they're angling for a ruling that they've always had the copyright to the code (or at least core / original parts), then presumably any licenses (FOSS or otherwise) granted by anyone who isn't Rambler would be null and void.
        nybble41 7y ago
        Yes, and while the focus is on the Nginx project, there are probably other projects that used code from Nginx that would also be affected.
        lolc 7y ago
        If they indeed have copyright then you cannot legally fork it without them giving you licence to it. Just because you have the code doesn't mean you have the licence. All the other licences would be void.
- vorot93 7y ago
  A bit of context. Rambler used to be a somewhat successful and independent Internet company, but in dire straits recently because it's lost the market to its primary competitor - Yandex. So very much like Yahoo vs Google. Now it's been bought out by Sberbank - the largest state bank run by a good friend of Putin. Sberbank is looking at becoming at becoming an IT monster, being a provider of just about everything - from food delivery to banking, with huge amount of Big Data at its heart. Delusions of grandeur at taxpayers' expense. This lawsuit is the first big move of the new Sberbank's management team in Rambler.
  - inoyakaigor 7y ago
    To be clear: Sberbank bought 46.5%
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  And that's yet another reason why copyrights can not last forever.
duelingjello 7y ago
Best practices for side projects (US): - Never give work full rights to everything you make on your own time. - Never use company hardware, software, time or offices to develop a side project you might want to monetize commercially later. - Charge work a "1 node license fee" of $1 with an invoice and a standard commercial software EULA if you intend to try your creation at work. Also specify that it includes maintenance for the duration of your employment and that all modifications, including those made on work time and on work hardware, are your property and that they are granted a license to them for 1 node. IANAL.
- ameshkov 7y ago
  The thing is I am not sure if Igor was developing Nginx on his own time. IANAL as well, but I am not sure if it counts if part of the work was done from his Rambler workplace.
  - symbix 7y ago
    According to Russian laws it does not matter. Igor was hired by Rambler to do system administration job, he was never assigned any software development job - that means Igor owns the copyright. His ex-boss is confirming this (in Russian: https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292...)
- neltnerb 7y ago
  I think you will run into conflict of interest issues with having your employer pay you to use your product. It might fly at some places, but I would be hesitant of running afoul of all manner of issues if there could be a perception that you are leveraging your employment position to profit your own company. Especially if your employer accepts money from the government. I agree with the first two though. I personally am leery of suggesting the use of my own products and services to a current employer, and would only do it if it's very clear that there's both not other great options and that there's not a conflict of interest (decision maker is in another department for instance) and recognize that I may need to quit my job to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest or legal issues with government grants or other awards that may prohibit employees from also being vendors. It's definitely riskier than just not using your personal projects at work unless your employer is actively pursuing using it fully independently (ex: your project is the only good solution to a problem and it's unreasonable for your employer to be the only people who can't use it). But even then, I'm largely unable to do work that only I can possibly do (i.e. I worked on two projects as an independent contractor for my current employer before they were my part-time employer) for people in another department despite being part time simply because it's too much of a mess to get it approved. I could probably get it done, but it's a huge hassle and not worth it for $1. But your current employer might also take major issue with you having a side business selling to their competitors stuff that they want to use, regardless of the technical legality... at the least you might get fired even if you've done nothing legally wrong it might be against their employment guidelines to do this if you're a full time employee. I specifically chose to be part time because I still do contract work on the side (and make more money doing that than I do at the part time job, but I really enjoy my part time job so I don't mind).
strenholme 7y ago
This is why I am very glad to be an independent contractor without the pesky “inventions” clause. With “inventions” clauses, if I worked on my open-source MaraDNS while on the clock, a company could make a reasonable legal case that they own it. Even in California, where a company can not own inventions done on one’s own equipment in one’s own time (as long as it’s not related to their day job), before signing an “inventions” clause, I am very careful to tag my GitHub repos with a date stamp before the date I signed the inventions clause, and only use versions of my open source software at work which I wrote before I started working for them (e.g. I have a secure password generator shell script, and when I use it to generate the dozen or so passwords I need to do my work, I use a version which existed before I started work at the company).
- strenholme 7y ago
  Replying to myself: Did you know that the website hosting this blog entry is using nginx as their server: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... There is something very ironic about a blog posting claiming that a company owns all of the software a developer makes in their free time, running on an open source server initially developed in Igor Sysoev’s free time while he was working for Rambler.
- pak9rabid 7y ago
  Whoa, you created MaraDNS? Man, I love that software. Been using it for years. Keep up the great work!
vorot93 7y ago
9.5 rules of doing business in Russia 1. Keep your servers abroad. 2. Register your domains abroad. 3. Register your company abroad. 4. Keep your money abroad and don't put all eggs in one basket. 5. Seriously, don't put all your eggs in one basket! 6. Keep your database abroad. 7. Document everything regarding your office setup. 8. Split the risks and assets. 9. You can give youself up voluntarily. Find a large patron or manage law enforcement protection yourself. 10. Leave the country.
- f311a 7y ago
  That could happen in any country. That's a corporate dispute. Rambler sold their NGINX "copyright rights" to a shady law firm (Lynwood Investments CY Ltd).
  - adamsea 7y ago
    Perhaps not as often or quite so capriciously
  - Craighead 7y ago
    Any country that has SORM laws passed.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Perhaps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky
  - iavael 7y ago
    That's not a corporate displute. It's probable cause in criminal law. Ngnix founders are already detained btw.
    - chupasaurus 7y ago
      They are currently being interrogated, not detained.
light_eye 7y ago
This is all because of the purchase by Sberbank (This is the largest Russian bank reporting to the government) of Rambler. In Russia, the chance of a fair trial in this case is very small. Sberbank simply “collects assets” and wages an unfair fight for money. It is a pity that the man in Russia and now he will be so pressured. Given that almost all media in Russia are subordinate to the state, a very small number of people find out about this situation and this is very sad. First, lawmakers are crashing Yandex stocks, now this. It is sad that I live in Russia ...
nathancahill 7y ago
Nginx Moscow office, rather than one of their other 6 locations (or F5 which now owns Nginx).
ivan4th 7y ago
I see it this way (being a Russian): it's not a copyright claim issue, but rather a hostage situation with bandits involved (a.k.a Russian authorities), and what they want is ransom so that top #1-2 nginx contributors don't go to jail for some 10 years.
- auiya 7y ago
  It feels like an intelligence shakedown. Nginx has a rather large install base. FSB would love to have an entry point in it I'm sure, or maybe they previously had one and are trying to gain it back?
  - anonymousjunior 7y ago
    This is what's really concerning. If FSB was able to actually implement something and shell all nginx boxes (and thusly obtain SSL certs, intercept communications, etc..) imagine how much access they'd have.
    - account73466 7y ago
      Then they would definitely advertise it by attacking the company so that the whole world would know about their secret backdoor. Very smart, indeed!
      - true_religion 7y ago
        Just thinking about it would have a chilling effect which to the authorities may be better than actual access.
        Filligree 7y ago
        I'm going to switch from nginx to Caddy, so I guess?
      - kick 7y ago
        Physical access is easier to get than remote access when you have a baton and the intelligence of a cop.
helloer 7y ago
More context (in russian): https://thebell.io/v-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-zaderzhany-delo-initsiirovala-kompaniya-aleksandra-mamuta/ https://thebell.io/v-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-... google translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fthebell.io%2Fv-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-zaderzhany-delo-initsiirovala-kompaniya-aleksandra-mamuta%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...
chupasaurus 7y ago
My bad translation of a related part from Sysoev's interview to a russian journal "Hacker"[0] made in 2012: - Interesting: you were working at Rambler while developing nginx. Did Rambler had any rights? That's a subtle question. How did you manage to keep the rights for project? Yes, that is a subtle question. It interests others beside you, and we thoroughly worked on that. Russian law works this way: the company has the right on anything which was in employee's field of work or by it's own contract. So there has to be a contract with someone with purpose "to make a software product". In Rambler I was a system administrator, I'd developed in my free time, product was distributed under BSD license since the beginning, as an open-source software. Rambler started using it after the main features were ready. More than that, even the first usage was outside of Rambler, it were Rate.ee and zvuki.ru websites. [0] https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/ https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  And the same quality translation of a commentary by Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, the company which initiated the case, given to the online magazine The Bell [0]: The Rambler Internet Holding (edit: it's legal name is Rambler Group LLC) company found that it's exclusive rights on NGINX web server, which was developed by it's employees with use of corporate resources, were violated by third parties. The company gave the right for infringment claims to Lynwood Investments CY Ltd (named A&NN Holdings Limited at the time of the deal), which has a competence in this type of cases. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd had appealed to law enforcement bodies for the evalution of this situation. They recognized Rambler Internet Holding as victim of actions by unidentified violators (sic!) and initiated a criminal case. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd would not comment the case until the court's decision. Wherein we would try to restore the justice with all ways possible and we reserve right to file lawsuits in any jurisdiction where it's needed to protect our interests. [0]https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 (NB: yes, Telegram)
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    The commentary[0] of Igor Ashmanov, who was CEO of Rambler when they hired Sysoev, on the document in tweet: Sysoev was developing in his work time, in the office, with company's equipment. (quote from the order: edit) 1. Bullshit. There isn't anything on that in our laws. You have to very accurately prove that there was an assignment on that. "In his work time" or "with company's equipment" - doesn't work. Everything's allowed - and IP is within authors. 2. Besides, when I hired Sysoev - it was in 2000 - we have talk specifically that he had his pet project and he'd have the right to work on it. It was called "mod_accel" or something, he renamed it in 2001-2002. I can make a statement about that in court, if needed. And my partner in my companies, Dmitriy Pashko, then-CTO of Rambler, could, I think. 3. He had worked as a system administrator. Software development wasn't in his responsibilities at all. 4. I think, Rambler cannot provide any paper, more so an assignment, on development of a web server. I asked our advocate, ..., to look what's going on. The lawyers of Runa Capital (edit: early investors of Nginx Inc.) already work in the case, so probably our help wouldn't be necessary. I think, skunks would fail. [0]https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... edit: link to the source
geerlingguy 7y ago
F5 buys Nginx, then months later there are suddenly copyright claims and raids relating to the founder having left a former company in 2012...
- nannal 7y ago
  Not sure about you but I always wait 7 years before enforcing dubious copyright rights.
- Eikon 7y ago
  Playing devil's advocate, I could see how something like that could legitimately take place in a similar situation as the previous employer may feel abused / betrayed, rightfully or not, once he sees a success that he may believes not being possible if it were not for giving some slack to his employees.
robert_tweed 7y ago
Slightly easier to read: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205086129504104460.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205086129504104460.html TLDR: Igor Sysoev started Nginx while employed by Rambler, who did not then claim copyright, but now they have. The police raid is a result of that claim.
- DanTheManPR 7y ago
  Russia has absurd IP hijacking rules that are being exploited.
  - anticodon 7y ago
    On the West there wouldn't be even a chance for this business: nginx would belong to employer by default.
    - wavefunction 7y ago
      By default but if you have enough leverage you can get all sorts of allowances from an employer. I always have any clause struck about the employer owning anything I produce outside of work for example. (I don't necessarily consider this to be an example of significant leverage just common-sense.)
    - q3k 7y ago
      It's not a 'West' thing, it's a US/wannabe-US company thing. Also likely illegal in most EU countries, anyway.
  - thesz 7y ago
    On contrary with US IP non-hijacking rules we see in the Apple vs Nuvia case. /sarcasm Both cases are quite similar to my eye.
  - ckotinko 7y ago
    I'm sure you can't name a single rule or law which is exploited in this case.
dial8gue 7y ago
KGB wants their piece of cake. Classic
- rvense 7y ago
  The KGB was broken up in 1991.
  - conistonwater 7y ago
    It's the same people under a different acronym, this is not a meaningful difference for most people.
    - tomlong 7y ago
      Especially for the Front Side Bus crowd
      - vincnetas 7y ago
        For unaware, FSB stands for (Russian) Federal Security Service which is direct successor of KGB : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service
  - stevespang 7y ago
    Not really, as someone who has actively owned business in Russia and traveled extensively in the former USSR, the agency was merely renamed "FSB". Also, all the Babushkas (old ladies) that sit out in apartment courtyards are still on the payroll and still report any interesting informatsey to the authorities. Nothing has changed. I once had business dealings with a former American head of the KPMG accounting offices in Moscow. They were raided too. After he handed over all the documents the Russian colonel in charge of the raid on site praised him mockingly: "You are a good corporate citizen".
gbuk2013 7y ago
Apparently some company called "Lynwood Investments CY Ltd" has bought the rights for copyright enforcement from Rambler Group - I guess this is classed as "copyright trolling"? Looking at the search warrant[1] the claim is that Nginx was developed while the author still worked at Rambler and during work time. [1] https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460 https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  do you think Russia is such a law and order country ? Let's wait and see...this isn't it.
  - gbuk2013 7y ago
    I try to stick to the facts and keep my biases out of the conversation and I wish the same to you.
mariopt 7y ago
Article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fvc.ru%2Flegal%2F97058-rambler-group-zayavila-o-narushenii-ee-prav-na-kod-nginx-neskolko-istochnikov-rasskazali-ob-obyskah-v-ofise-razrabotchika https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...
inzeppelin 7y ago
More info: https://habr.com/en/post/479968/ https://habr.com/en/post/479968/
aaron695 7y ago
If they own copyright.... Which isn't crazy... Then the licenseing Igor put on it is null and void I assume, so everyone's instance would become illegal upon that court decision?
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  In Russia - yes, but I think it could be appealed in other countries.
- pkilgore 7y ago
  It's a little more complicated than that. One might have equitable defenses to infringement. Its doubtful a violation will be considered criminal (USA). Certainly if you are worried keep an eye on the Russian trial and hire a lawyer!
aneutron 7y ago
This is a new level of copyright trolling.
vermontdevil 7y ago
So what are the long term impact if any can opine here? Doesn't sound good for the founder.
xfalcox 7y ago
With the original open sourcing license of nginx in doubt, it is prudent for open source projects to look into alternatives?
- synack 7y ago
  OpenBSD's httpd is similar enough for relatively simple use cases, porting it to other platforms wouldn't be impossible.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Besides the standard Apache, may I suggest the underdog favorite of mine, Hiawatha? I was dissapointed when the license moved from GPL to MIT, but it's still awesome. [1] There is also Caddy, a go based webserver, which is Apache licensed I think. [2] Then there is also lighttpd, which is small and fast, but 3-clause bsd. [3] [1]https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ [2]https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ [3]https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.lighttpd.net/
  - strenholme 7y ago
    Not to mention thttpd, which was updated as recently as last year: http://acme.com/software/thttpd/ http://acme.com/software/thttpd/
- symbix 7y ago
  Don't even worry about the license. Even if Russian court voids the license (which can easily happen because there's no justice in Russia), it won't affect any other jurisdiction.
- bovermyer 7y ago
  I'd recommend looking at Traefik, Caddy Server, HAProxy, or a combination of them.
- OrangeUnicorn12 7y ago
  As I mentioned before, Apache is The Best Web Server in the world. Period. If you want simplest non-bloated and secure - OpenBSD's httpd is absolute king. But for many generations of IT people Apache had (and still has) that nice homey feeling. One of Best things that happened to IT world. Edit: s/https/httpd :-) bloody phones and their "smart" keyboards
kp98 7y ago
always wondered, is it pronounced 'en-gin-ex' or 'N-ginx', there was a debate in my office
- symlinkk 7y ago
  I was told that N-ginx is a curse word in Chinese, so I pronounce it En-Gin-Ex. I think the former is more intuitive though
  - gwd 7y ago
    > I was told that N-ginx is a curse word in Chinese Don't know that many swear words in Chinese, but I know that that "ginks" isn't really pronouncable in Chinese. You could do "ging", but the "k" and the "s" would then need to be separate syllables; the best you could get is "en ging ke se", which isn't really close enough to "N-ginks" to be dangerous. (Similarly, "golf" ends up as three syllables: "gao er fu", plus "qiu" added to the end to clarify that it's a game involving a ball.)
  - symbix 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure Igor Sysoev does not speak Chinese. It was "engine-x" from the very start.
- jolmg 7y ago
  From the official FAQ[1]: > How do you pronounce “NGINX”? > Correct: en-juhn-eks, Engine-X > Incorrect: en-jingks I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually an abbreviation of "engine-x", but I can't find any better source that explains how they came up with the name. Still, this source pretty much implies it. [1] https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/community/faq/#how-do-you-pronounce-nginx https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/community/faq/#how-do-y...
  - alvelcom 7y ago
    http://nginx.org/en/ http://nginx.org/en/ > nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server, originally written by Igor Sysoev.
punarinta 7y ago
Oh my, I still see people in the comments who naively think this is a copyright issue. Seriously? 15 years after the alleged event? With physical violence against software developers? It's only one among thousands of cases when putinists rob successful companies. The world must put more pressure on putinism, because eventually all the stolen resources turn into imprisonments of people in the country and deaths of people in the countries attacked by that putinist machine.
- lolc 7y ago
  But this is absolutely a copyright issue! If a company has copyright on something I use, I need a license from them. Now we don't know what Russian courts will decide here, and we also don't know whether courts in other countries would respect that. What could happen as a worst case "robbery" scenario is that the developer is forced to agree they never had copyright! So whether or not the claim was unjustified, it might become a huge problem not just for the individual developers of Nginx but for everybody distributing it or using it. And that has a lot to do with how copyright works.
  - chris_wot 7y ago
    And yet, copyright is a civil dispute. I’ve never heard of a police raid due to copyright.
    - gbuk2013 7y ago
      According to the warrant[1] it seems to be a criminal case. Anyway, you should read up on the BSA copyright raids. Fortunately they seem to have fallen out of fashion. https://mobile.twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460 https://mobile.twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/12050861295041...
    - niij 7y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid
  - 7y ago
ckotinko 7y ago
Hello from Russia. I've read documents provided by nginx employee Igor Ippolitov, and I'm convinced Rambler is commiting a offence under article 306 of criminal codex. In brief, in Russia an employee retains all rights on his/her/it's intellectual property if he/she/it was not instructed to do this job. Former Rambler CEO confirmed that Sysoev has no instructions to create a web server. At the same time, Rambler claims that: "unknown person at an unspecified time acting within the scope of his duties and on behalf of management". unknown person cannot have a scope of his duties. management cannot give orders to an unknown person.
SergeAx 7y ago
location / { add_header X-Supports "Igor Sysoev" always; }
SergeAx 7y ago
location / { add_header X-Supports "Igor Sysoev" always; }
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Sad times, I really like nginx. Maybe its time for nginy a web server developed in an extradition proof country with strong privacy protection and shell company laws. I could imagine saying that in jest but as these things get more common (a non-equivalent other than power imbalance story is the Apple suing its employee for starting a server chip company) its going to take a lot of planning to develop something and "keep" control of it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rolph 7y ago
considering this thread and a host of others, regarding mobile phones being rousted, I think its time to start looking at developing systems that have a "panic mode" as in "we would comply if we could but you guys scared the system and it hid, we have to wait until it comes out again"
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
The company I worked for made photo equipment, and had a lot of creatives on staff. As such, they did not have the typical "We own the ideas you came up with in the shower" clause that most companies have. Because of that, I was able to develop a fairly popular OS package (popular in a limited demographic, so it's not "A-List").
iaml 7y ago
Some guy on the internet claims this case has no leg to stand on, and the whole reason the office was raided was to scare them into cooperation or revealing useful information. Then they'll catalogue that and say 'not a criminal issue'. The trick is, those materials could then be used in a civil case. This is full text, in russian: https://habr.com/en/company/itsumma/blog/479942/#comment_20999346 https://habr.com/en/company/itsumma/blog/479942/#comment_209...
smartynov 7y ago
I wrote a short summary on the situation for my English-speaking friends and would like to share here too. Introduction nginx is one of the most popular web-server software, used by hundreds of millions of websites worldwide. It was written by Igor Sysoev in early 2000s, was released and is maintained as an open source software. At the time of initial release Igor was working for Rambler (a Russian internet company). In 2011 Igor and his partners founded a BVI company Nginx Inc. to provide commercial products and support for the software. The nginx software remained (and still remains) open source. They raised some VC financing and in 2019 were finally acquired by a public company F5 Networks, Inc. for an impressive $670 million. What has happened? Today Igor and his partner Maxim Konovalov were arrested in Moscow and are being interrogated. A search is performed in Moscow office of the company. It became public that Rambler filed a lawsuit for breaking its IP rights on nginx. It might look like a typical IP ownership conflict, but there are details: a) Worldwide internet infrastructure relies heavily on nginx. b) People are under arrest, which illustrates a serious intention and may lead to unpleasant consequences. c) It all happened some months after a successful acquisition, while Rambler was aware of nginx for more than 15 years since the date of the initial nginx release. What's next? It is extremely unlikely that Internet will meet any short-term consequences. No, there's no way to turn down nginx remotely, there's no backdoors, etc – so Internet is safe. No, there is no chance that Russian secret service or someone else will use this situation to introduce some backdoors to nginx server. As any popular open-source software, nginx is developed by hundreds of independent individuals from various countries. The source code is always publicly available, and each developer is highly aware about security. Long-term consequences are possible, including decline in nginx popularity and development of alternative software. If nginx will be forced to change its licence or shut down, it's very likely that community will instantly make a fork and/or a complete rewrite of this webserver under a new name (which has happened before to MySQL, for instance). We all hope that this conflict will be resolved, and Igor and Maxim will be safe and sound. All we can do now is spread this information in as straight and clear way.
- jimjag 7y ago
  If nginx has dubious copyright, you cannot fork the code, since not being open source, it is legally not-forkable. Yes, you could do a complete rewrite, but that would require doing so in a "clean room" fashion, which would be very difficult.
coolic 7y ago
Making business in Russia, rule #1: - run!
- appkate 7y ago
  Or don't run business in Russia at all.
killjoywashere 7y ago
Having read Red Notice, I strongly suspect the plot is much thicker than a simple copyright violation. The fact that NGINX now runs the majority of web traffic would be a clear signal to the Russian oligarchs that this NGINX is a valuable commodity to control and Sysoev needs to be moved aside. I'm guessing they don't have a deep understanding of BSD licensing terms, but they understand the value of controlling the contributors, and the log files.
zelon88 7y ago
So this is what happens when successful ideas in Russia gain market share? Why would anyone want to execute their ideas in Russia?
- Dim25 7y ago
  They may not have a choice?
  - chopin 7y ago
    Or just don't do it. Russia has around the GDP of Italy this might have to do something with it.
FpUser 7y ago
Damn. And I've just switched to it less then a month ago.
Dim25 7y ago
Igor Ashmanov (the guy who hired Sysoev, and was a COO at the Rambler at the time) said that the Ngnix (under different name) was indeed a side project started before Sysoev joined Rambler. Moreover this was properly disclosed, and green lighted by Rambler executives at the time. Source: https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... (Russian)
OrangeUnicorn12 7y ago
This is exactly why Apache still rocks. Software developer got greedy, rich and robbed by state actors. Should have contributed to Apache instead.
asdf2233 7y ago
"It seems that someone has already adapted to the system from police searches, or simply to support NGINX!" https://pari-match.club/ https://pari-match.club/ https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub
stevefan1999 7y ago
real life Pied Piper...
dottedmag 7y ago
Rambler board has asked the management to ask the police to close the criminal case, look into the situation again and file a civil lawsuit if needed: https://www.interfax.ru/russia/688213 https://www.interfax.ru/russia/688213

586 points by ameshkov 7y ago

Igor Sysoev developed Nginx while working in Rambler (a Russian search engine) back in 2002-2004. Now, 15 years later, Rambler filed a copyright claim against Nginx and Igor, and demands (allegedly) 51M RUB from them.

duelingjello 7y ago
I think the statue of limitations in Russia is under 10 years for most civil claims. Maybe someone can clarify what are the actual charges and what would the statute of limitations be? If statute of limitations ran out, maybe the corporate lawyer can get this thrown out quickly?
- ma2rten 7y ago
  I don't think it works like that. The supposed copyright violation is ongoing.
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    I should remind you that there was a 1:342 ratio of "Not guilty" to "Guilty" decisions on the criminal cases in Russia last year, and the it's declining year-to-year.
    - Corazoor 7y ago
      I was interested in the ratio for the US, which based on a quick lookup seems to be 1:249 for federal cases... (Numbers taken from here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-federal-criminal-defendants-go-to-trial-and-most-who-do-are-found-guilty/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-f...) Just wanted to note that it is not a very good way to gauge opressiveness or fairness... In a perfect world, charges would only ever be brought against the guilty, and only the guilty would be found as such by court. In such a World the ratio would be 0:<division by zero error>...
      - chupasaurus 7y ago
        The corruption in judicial circles of Russia works this way: the police had opened the case, the defendant obviously isn't guilty, we state that he's guilty with a penalty of conditional term instead of a real one and free him in a court's room. If we state that he isn't guilty, then it would start the process of quality check in all parties involved in the development of the case which unavoidably ends with penalties or criminal cases upon the policemen, nah we don't need that. I agree on a perfect world scenario, but we in Russia have a big pile of ridiculous court decisions every month.
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        > Just wanted to note that it is not a very good way to gauge oppressiveness or fairness I would point out that the conviction ratio of the US is indicative of massive flaws in the powers that DAs have in most jurisdictions to force time limited plea agreements on defendants who have limited information and are under threat of charges with much higher penalties. This can usually be done without any oversight or approval from judges. > In a perfect world, charges would only ever be brought against the guilty, and only the guilty would be found as such by court. In such a World the ratio would be 0:<division by zero error>... That sounds like a world with complete surveillance, no privacy and a judicial system with absolute power. Doesn't sound like a perfect world to me.
- kelvich 7y ago
  > what would the statute of limitations be It is usually 3 years for such cases, but it counts since the moment of time when alleged infringement was discovered.
tssva 7y ago
To save anyone else having to look it up. 51M RUB is currently around US $810k.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Somewhat surprised this hasn't settled out of court then.
  - eps 7y ago
    I'd be surprised if it had been. I'd wager Rambler is after the ngnix itself rather than some cash.
    - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
      But even if they "owned" nginx - what does it get them? The community would immediately fork it and change the branding. The same happened to MySQL when Sun was bought by Oracle when MariaDB was forked - though I concede MariaDB isn't as popular as I hoped.
      - jsty 7y ago
        If they're angling for a ruling that they've always had the copyright to the code (or at least core / original parts), then presumably any licenses (FOSS or otherwise) granted by anyone who isn't Rambler would be null and void.
        nybble41 7y ago
        Yes, and while the focus is on the Nginx project, there are probably other projects that used code from Nginx that would also be affected.
      - lolc 7y ago
        If they indeed have copyright then you cannot legally fork it without them giving you licence to it. Just because you have the code doesn't mean you have the licence. All the other licences would be void.
vorot93 7y ago
A bit of context. Rambler used to be a somewhat successful and independent Internet company, but in dire straits recently because it's lost the market to its primary competitor - Yandex. So very much like Yahoo vs Google. Now it's been bought out by Sberbank - the largest state bank run by a good friend of Putin. Sberbank is looking at becoming at becoming an IT monster, being a provider of just about everything - from food delivery to banking, with huge amount of Big Data at its heart. Delusions of grandeur at taxpayers' expense. This lawsuit is the first big move of the new Sberbank's management team in Rambler.
- inoyakaigor 7y ago
  To be clear: Sberbank bought 46.5%
marcosdumay 7y ago
And that's yet another reason why copyrights can not last forever.

duelingjello 7y ago

Best practices for side projects (US): - Never give work full rights to everything you make on your own time. - Never use company hardware, software, time or offices to develop a side project you might want to monetize commercially later. - Charge work a "1 node license fee" of $1 with an invoice and a standard commercial software EULA if you intend to try your creation at work. Also specify that it includes maintenance for the duration of your employment and that all modifications, including those made on work time and on work hardware, are your property and that they are granted a license to them for 1 node. IANAL.

ameshkov 7y ago
The thing is I am not sure if Igor was developing Nginx on his own time. IANAL as well, but I am not sure if it counts if part of the work was done from his Rambler workplace.
- symbix 7y ago
  According to Russian laws it does not matter. Igor was hired by Rambler to do system administration job, he was never assigned any software development job - that means Igor owns the copyright. His ex-boss is confirming this (in Russian: https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292...)
neltnerb 7y ago
I think you will run into conflict of interest issues with having your employer pay you to use your product. It might fly at some places, but I would be hesitant of running afoul of all manner of issues if there could be a perception that you are leveraging your employment position to profit your own company. Especially if your employer accepts money from the government. I agree with the first two though. I personally am leery of suggesting the use of my own products and services to a current employer, and would only do it if it's very clear that there's both not other great options and that there's not a conflict of interest (decision maker is in another department for instance) and recognize that I may need to quit my job to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest or legal issues with government grants or other awards that may prohibit employees from also being vendors. It's definitely riskier than just not using your personal projects at work unless your employer is actively pursuing using it fully independently (ex: your project is the only good solution to a problem and it's unreasonable for your employer to be the only people who can't use it). But even then, I'm largely unable to do work that only I can possibly do (i.e. I worked on two projects as an independent contractor for my current employer before they were my part-time employer) for people in another department despite being part time simply because it's too much of a mess to get it approved. I could probably get it done, but it's a huge hassle and not worth it for $1. But your current employer might also take major issue with you having a side business selling to their competitors stuff that they want to use, regardless of the technical legality... at the least you might get fired even if you've done nothing legally wrong it might be against their employment guidelines to do this if you're a full time employee. I specifically chose to be part time because I still do contract work on the side (and make more money doing that than I do at the part time job, but I really enjoy my part time job so I don't mind).

strenholme 7y ago

This is why I am very glad to be an independent contractor without the pesky “inventions” clause. With “inventions” clauses, if I worked on my open-source MaraDNS while on the clock, a company could make a reasonable legal case that they own it. Even in California, where a company can not own inventions done on one’s own equipment in one’s own time (as long as it’s not related to their day job), before signing an “inventions” clause, I am very careful to tag my GitHub repos with a date stamp before the date I signed the inventions clause, and only use versions of my open source software at work which I wrote before I started working for them (e.g. I have a secure password generator shell script, and when I use it to generate the dozen or so passwords I need to do my work, I use a version which existed before I started work at the company).

strenholme 7y ago
Replying to myself: Did you know that the website hosting this blog entry is using nginx as their server: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... There is something very ironic about a blog posting claiming that a company owns all of the software a developer makes in their free time, running on an open source server initially developed in Igor Sysoev’s free time while he was working for Rambler.
pak9rabid 7y ago
Whoa, you created MaraDNS? Man, I love that software. Been using it for years. Keep up the great work!

vorot93 7y ago

9.5 rules of doing business in Russia 1. Keep your servers abroad. 2. Register your domains abroad. 3. Register your company abroad. 4. Keep your money abroad and don't put all eggs in one basket. 5. Seriously, don't put all your eggs in one basket! 6. Keep your database abroad. 7. Document everything regarding your office setup. 8. Split the risks and assets. 9. You can give youself up voluntarily. Find a large patron or manage law enforcement protection yourself. 10. Leave the country.

f311a 7y ago
That could happen in any country. That's a corporate dispute. Rambler sold their NGINX "copyright rights" to a shady law firm (Lynwood Investments CY Ltd).
- adamsea 7y ago
  Perhaps not as often or quite so capriciously
- Craighead 7y ago
  Any country that has SORM laws passed.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Perhaps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky
- iavael 7y ago
  That's not a corporate displute. It's probable cause in criminal law. Ngnix founders are already detained btw.
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    They are currently being interrogated, not detained.

light_eye 7y ago

This is all because of the purchase by Sberbank (This is the largest Russian bank reporting to the government) of Rambler. In Russia, the chance of a fair trial in this case is very small. Sberbank simply “collects assets” and wages an unfair fight for money. It is a pity that the man in Russia and now he will be so pressured. Given that almost all media in Russia are subordinate to the state, a very small number of people find out about this situation and this is very sad. First, lawmakers are crashing Yandex stocks, now this. It is sad that I live in Russia ...

nathancahill 7y ago

Nginx Moscow office, rather than one of their other 6 locations (or F5 which now owns Nginx).

ivan4th 7y ago

I see it this way (being a Russian): it's not a copyright claim issue, but rather a hostage situation with bandits involved (a.k.a Russian authorities), and what they want is ransom so that top #1-2 nginx contributors don't go to jail for some 10 years.

auiya 7y ago
It feels like an intelligence shakedown. Nginx has a rather large install base. FSB would love to have an entry point in it I'm sure, or maybe they previously had one and are trying to gain it back?
- anonymousjunior 7y ago
  This is what's really concerning. If FSB was able to actually implement something and shell all nginx boxes (and thusly obtain SSL certs, intercept communications, etc..) imagine how much access they'd have.
  - account73466 7y ago
    Then they would definitely advertise it by attacking the company so that the whole world would know about their secret backdoor. Very smart, indeed!
    - true_religion 7y ago
      Just thinking about it would have a chilling effect which to the authorities may be better than actual access.
      - Filligree 7y ago
        I'm going to switch from nginx to Caddy, so I guess?
    - kick 7y ago
      Physical access is easier to get than remote access when you have a baton and the intelligence of a cop.

helloer 7y ago

More context (in russian): https://thebell.io/v-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-zaderzhany-delo-initsiirovala-kompaniya-aleksandra-mamuta/ https://thebell.io/v-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-... google translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fthebell.io%2Fv-ofise-startapa-nginx-obyski-osnovateli-zaderzhany-delo-initsiirovala-kompaniya-aleksandra-mamuta%2F http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...

chupasaurus 7y ago

My bad translation of a related part from Sysoev's interview to a russian journal "Hacker"[0] made in 2012: - Interesting: you were working at Rambler while developing nginx. Did Rambler had any rights? That's a subtle question. How did you manage to keep the rights for project? Yes, that is a subtle question. It interests others beside you, and we thoroughly worked on that. Russian law works this way: the company has the right on anything which was in employee's field of work or by it's own contract. So there has to be a contract with someone with purpose "to make a software product". In Rambler I was a system administrator, I'd developed in my free time, product was distributed under BSD license since the beginning, as an open-source software. Rambler started using it after the main features were ready. More than that, even the first usage was outside of Rambler, it were Rate.ee and zvuki.ru websites. [0] https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/ https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/

chupasaurus 7y ago
And the same quality translation of a commentary by Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, the company which initiated the case, given to the online magazine The Bell [0]: The Rambler Internet Holding (edit: it's legal name is Rambler Group LLC) company found that it's exclusive rights on NGINX web server, which was developed by it's employees with use of corporate resources, were violated by third parties. The company gave the right for infringment claims to Lynwood Investments CY Ltd (named A&NN Holdings Limited at the time of the deal), which has a competence in this type of cases. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd had appealed to law enforcement bodies for the evalution of this situation. They recognized Rambler Internet Holding as victim of actions by unidentified violators (sic!) and initiated a criminal case. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd would not comment the case until the court's decision. Wherein we would try to restore the justice with all ways possible and we reserve right to file lawsuits in any jurisdiction where it's needed to protect our interests. [0]https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 (NB: yes, Telegram)
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  The commentary[0] of Igor Ashmanov, who was CEO of Rambler when they hired Sysoev, on the document in tweet: Sysoev was developing in his work time, in the office, with company's equipment. (quote from the order: edit) 1. Bullshit. There isn't anything on that in our laws. You have to very accurately prove that there was an assignment on that. "In his work time" or "with company's equipment" - doesn't work. Everything's allowed - and IP is within authors. 2. Besides, when I hired Sysoev - it was in 2000 - we have talk specifically that he had his pet project and he'd have the right to work on it. It was called "mod_accel" or something, he renamed it in 2001-2002. I can make a statement about that in court, if needed. And my partner in my companies, Dmitriy Pashko, then-CTO of Rambler, could, I think. 3. He had worked as a system administrator. Software development wasn't in his responsibilities at all. 4. I think, Rambler cannot provide any paper, more so an assignment, on development of a web server. I asked our advocate, ..., to look what's going on. The lawyers of Runa Capital (edit: early investors of Nginx Inc.) already work in the case, so probably our help wouldn't be necessary. I think, skunks would fail. [0]https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... edit: link to the source

geerlingguy 7y ago

F5 buys Nginx, then months later there are suddenly copyright claims and raids relating to the founder having left a former company in 2012...

nannal 7y ago
Not sure about you but I always wait 7 years before enforcing dubious copyright rights.
Eikon 7y ago
Playing devil's advocate, I could see how something like that could legitimately take place in a similar situation as the previous employer may feel abused / betrayed, rightfully or not, once he sees a success that he may believes not being possible if it were not for giving some slack to his employees.

robert_tweed 7y ago

Slightly easier to read: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205086129504104460.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1205086129504104460.html TLDR: Igor Sysoev started Nginx while employed by Rambler, who did not then claim copyright, but now they have. The police raid is a result of that claim.

DanTheManPR 7y ago
Russia has absurd IP hijacking rules that are being exploited.
- anticodon 7y ago
  On the West there wouldn't be even a chance for this business: nginx would belong to employer by default.
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    By default but if you have enough leverage you can get all sorts of allowances from an employer. I always have any clause struck about the employer owning anything I produce outside of work for example. (I don't necessarily consider this to be an example of significant leverage just common-sense.)
  - q3k 7y ago
    It's not a 'West' thing, it's a US/wannabe-US company thing. Also likely illegal in most EU countries, anyway.
- thesz 7y ago
  On contrary with US IP non-hijacking rules we see in the Apple vs Nuvia case. /sarcasm Both cases are quite similar to my eye.
- ckotinko 7y ago
  I'm sure you can't name a single rule or law which is exploited in this case.

dial8gue 7y ago

KGB wants their piece of cake. Classic

rvense 7y ago
The KGB was broken up in 1991.
- conistonwater 7y ago
  It's the same people under a different acronym, this is not a meaningful difference for most people.
  - tomlong 7y ago
    Especially for the Front Side Bus crowd
    - vincnetas 7y ago
      For unaware, FSB stands for (Russian) Federal Security Service which is direct successor of KGB : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service
- stevespang 7y ago
  Not really, as someone who has actively owned business in Russia and traveled extensively in the former USSR, the agency was merely renamed "FSB". Also, all the Babushkas (old ladies) that sit out in apartment courtyards are still on the payroll and still report any interesting informatsey to the authorities. Nothing has changed. I once had business dealings with a former American head of the KPMG accounting offices in Moscow. They were raided too. After he handed over all the documents the Russian colonel in charge of the raid on site praised him mockingly: "You are a good corporate citizen".

gbuk2013 7y ago

Apparently some company called "Lynwood Investments CY Ltd" has bought the rights for copyright enforcement from Rambler Group - I guess this is classed as "copyright trolling"? Looking at the search warrant[1] the claim is that Nginx was developed while the author still worked at Rambler and during work time. [1] https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460 https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460

onetimemanytime 7y ago
do you think Russia is such a law and order country ? Let's wait and see...this isn't it.
- gbuk2013 7y ago
  I try to stick to the facts and keep my biases out of the conversation and I wish the same to you.

mariopt 7y ago

Article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fvc.ru%2Flegal%2F97058-rambler-group-zayavila-o-narushenii-ee-prav-na-kod-nginx-neskolko-istochnikov-rasskazali-ob-obyskah-v-ofise-razrabotchika https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...

inzeppelin 7y ago

More info: https://habr.com/en/post/479968/ https://habr.com/en/post/479968/

aaron695 7y ago

If they own copyright.... Which isn't crazy... Then the licenseing Igor put on it is null and void I assume, so everyone's instance would become illegal upon that court decision?

chupasaurus 7y ago
In Russia - yes, but I think it could be appealed in other countries.
pkilgore 7y ago
It's a little more complicated than that. One might have equitable defenses to infringement. Its doubtful a violation will be considered criminal (USA). Certainly if you are worried keep an eye on the Russian trial and hire a lawyer!

aneutron 7y ago

This is a new level of copyright trolling.

vermontdevil 7y ago

So what are the long term impact if any can opine here? Doesn't sound good for the founder.

xfalcox 7y ago

With the original open sourcing license of nginx in doubt, it is prudent for open source projects to look into alternatives?

synack 7y ago
OpenBSD's httpd is similar enough for relatively simple use cases, porting it to other platforms wouldn't be impossible.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
Besides the standard Apache, may I suggest the underdog favorite of mine, Hiawatha? I was dissapointed when the license moved from GPL to MIT, but it's still awesome. [1] There is also Caddy, a go based webserver, which is Apache licensed I think. [2] Then there is also lighttpd, which is small and fast, but 3-clause bsd. [3] [1]https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ https://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/ [2]https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ [3]https://www.lighttpd.net/ https://www.lighttpd.net/
- strenholme 7y ago
  Not to mention thttpd, which was updated as recently as last year: http://acme.com/software/thttpd/ http://acme.com/software/thttpd/
symbix 7y ago
Don't even worry about the license. Even if Russian court voids the license (which can easily happen because there's no justice in Russia), it won't affect any other jurisdiction.
bovermyer 7y ago
I'd recommend looking at Traefik, Caddy Server, HAProxy, or a combination of them.
OrangeUnicorn12 7y ago
As I mentioned before, Apache is The Best Web Server in the world. Period. If you want simplest non-bloated and secure - OpenBSD's httpd is absolute king. But for many generations of IT people Apache had (and still has) that nice homey feeling. One of Best things that happened to IT world. Edit: s/https/httpd :-) bloody phones and their "smart" keyboards

kp98 7y ago

always wondered, is it pronounced 'en-gin-ex' or 'N-ginx', there was a debate in my office

symlinkk 7y ago
I was told that N-ginx is a curse word in Chinese, so I pronounce it En-Gin-Ex. I think the former is more intuitive though
- gwd 7y ago
  > I was told that N-ginx is a curse word in Chinese Don't know that many swear words in Chinese, but I know that that "ginks" isn't really pronouncable in Chinese. You could do "ging", but the "k" and the "s" would then need to be separate syllables; the best you could get is "en ging ke se", which isn't really close enough to "N-ginks" to be dangerous. (Similarly, "golf" ends up as three syllables: "gao er fu", plus "qiu" added to the end to clarify that it's a game involving a ball.)
- symbix 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure Igor Sysoev does not speak Chinese. It was "engine-x" from the very start.
jolmg 7y ago
From the official FAQ[1]: > How do you pronounce “NGINX”? > Correct: en-juhn-eks, Engine-X > Incorrect: en-jingks I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually an abbreviation of "engine-x", but I can't find any better source that explains how they came up with the name. Still, this source pretty much implies it. [1] https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/community/faq/#how-do-you-pronounce-nginx https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/community/faq/#how-do-y...
- alvelcom 7y ago
  http://nginx.org/en/ http://nginx.org/en/ > nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server, originally written by Igor Sysoev.

punarinta 7y ago

Oh my, I still see people in the comments who naively think this is a copyright issue. Seriously? 15 years after the alleged event? With physical violence against software developers? It's only one among thousands of cases when putinists rob successful companies. The world must put more pressure on putinism, because eventually all the stolen resources turn into imprisonments of people in the country and deaths of people in the countries attacked by that putinist machine.

lolc 7y ago
But this is absolutely a copyright issue! If a company has copyright on something I use, I need a license from them. Now we don't know what Russian courts will decide here, and we also don't know whether courts in other countries would respect that. What could happen as a worst case "robbery" scenario is that the developer is forced to agree they never had copyright! So whether or not the claim was unjustified, it might become a huge problem not just for the individual developers of Nginx but for everybody distributing it or using it. And that has a lot to do with how copyright works.
- chris_wot 7y ago
  And yet, copyright is a civil dispute. I’ve never heard of a police raid due to copyright.
  - gbuk2013 7y ago
    According to the warrant[1] it seems to be a criminal case. Anyway, you should read up on the BSA copyright raids. Fortunately they seem to have fallen out of fashion. https://mobile.twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205086129504104460 https://mobile.twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/12050861295041...
  - niij 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid
- 7y ago

ckotinko 7y ago

Hello from Russia. I've read documents provided by nginx employee Igor Ippolitov, and I'm convinced Rambler is commiting a offence under article 306 of criminal codex. In brief, in Russia an employee retains all rights on his/her/it's intellectual property if he/she/it was not instructed to do this job. Former Rambler CEO confirmed that Sysoev has no instructions to create a web server. At the same time, Rambler claims that: "unknown person at an unspecified time acting within the scope of his duties and on behalf of management". unknown person cannot have a scope of his duties. management cannot give orders to an unknown person.

SergeAx 7y ago

location / { add_header X-Supports "Igor Sysoev" always; }

SergeAx 7y ago

location / { add_header X-Supports "Igor Sysoev" always; }

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Sad times, I really like nginx. Maybe its time for nginy a web server developed in an extradition proof country with strong privacy protection and shell company laws. I could imagine saying that in jest but as these things get more common (a non-equivalent other than power imbalance story is the Apple suing its employee for starting a server chip company) its going to take a lot of planning to develop something and "keep" control of it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rolph 7y ago

considering this thread and a host of others, regarding mobile phones being rousted, I think its time to start looking at developing systems that have a "panic mode" as in "we would comply if we could but you guys scared the system and it hid, we have to wait until it comes out again"

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

The company I worked for made photo equipment, and had a lot of creatives on staff. As such, they did not have the typical "We own the ideas you came up with in the shower" clause that most companies have. Because of that, I was able to develop a fairly popular OS package (popular in a limited demographic, so it's not "A-List").

iaml 7y ago

Some guy on the internet claims this case has no leg to stand on, and the whole reason the office was raided was to scare them into cooperation or revealing useful information. Then they'll catalogue that and say 'not a criminal issue'. The trick is, those materials could then be used in a civil case. This is full text, in russian: https://habr.com/en/company/itsumma/blog/479942/#comment_20999346 https://habr.com/en/company/itsumma/blog/479942/#comment_209...

smartynov 7y ago

I wrote a short summary on the situation for my English-speaking friends and would like to share here too. Introduction nginx is one of the most popular web-server software, used by hundreds of millions of websites worldwide. It was written by Igor Sysoev in early 2000s, was released and is maintained as an open source software. At the time of initial release Igor was working for Rambler (a Russian internet company). In 2011 Igor and his partners founded a BVI company Nginx Inc. to provide commercial products and support for the software. The nginx software remained (and still remains) open source. They raised some VC financing and in 2019 were finally acquired by a public company F5 Networks, Inc. for an impressive $670 million. What has happened? Today Igor and his partner Maxim Konovalov were arrested in Moscow and are being interrogated. A search is performed in Moscow office of the company. It became public that Rambler filed a lawsuit for breaking its IP rights on nginx. It might look like a typical IP ownership conflict, but there are details: a) Worldwide internet infrastructure relies heavily on nginx. b) People are under arrest, which illustrates a serious intention and may lead to unpleasant consequences. c) It all happened some months after a successful acquisition, while Rambler was aware of nginx for more than 15 years since the date of the initial nginx release. What's next? It is extremely unlikely that Internet will meet any short-term consequences. No, there's no way to turn down nginx remotely, there's no backdoors, etc – so Internet is safe. No, there is no chance that Russian secret service or someone else will use this situation to introduce some backdoors to nginx server. As any popular open-source software, nginx is developed by hundreds of independent individuals from various countries. The source code is always publicly available, and each developer is highly aware about security. Long-term consequences are possible, including decline in nginx popularity and development of alternative software. If nginx will be forced to change its licence or shut down, it's very likely that community will instantly make a fork and/or a complete rewrite of this webserver under a new name (which has happened before to MySQL, for instance). We all hope that this conflict will be resolved, and Igor and Maxim will be safe and sound. All we can do now is spread this information in as straight and clear way.

jimjag 7y ago
If nginx has dubious copyright, you cannot fork the code, since not being open source, it is legally not-forkable. Yes, you could do a complete rewrite, but that would require doing so in a "clean room" fashion, which would be very difficult.

coolic 7y ago

Making business in Russia, rule #1: - run!

appkate 7y ago
Or don't run business in Russia at all.

killjoywashere 7y ago

Having read Red Notice, I strongly suspect the plot is much thicker than a simple copyright violation. The fact that NGINX now runs the majority of web traffic would be a clear signal to the Russian oligarchs that this NGINX is a valuable commodity to control and Sysoev needs to be moved aside. I'm guessing they don't have a deep understanding of BSD licensing terms, but they understand the value of controlling the contributors, and the log files.

zelon88 7y ago

So this is what happens when successful ideas in Russia gain market share? Why would anyone want to execute their ideas in Russia?

Dim25 7y ago
They may not have a choice?
- chopin 7y ago
  Or just don't do it. Russia has around the GDP of Italy this might have to do something with it.

FpUser 7y ago

Damn. And I've just switched to it less then a month ago.

Dim25 7y ago

Igor Ashmanov (the guy who hired Sysoev, and was a COO at the Rambler at the time) said that the Ngnix (under different name) was indeed a side project started before Sysoev joined Rambler. Moreover this was properly disclosed, and green lighted by Rambler executives at the time. Source: https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... (Russian)

OrangeUnicorn12 7y ago

This is exactly why Apache still rocks. Software developer got greedy, rich and robbed by state actors. Should have contributed to Apache instead.

asdf2233 7y ago

"It seems that someone has already adapted to the system from police searches, or simply to support NGINX!" https://pari-match.club/ https://pari-match.club/ https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub https://monosnap.com/direct/JM4VGPga3PaV7Z4pQEdQgiMEIwi0ub

stevefan1999 7y ago

real life Pied Piper...

dottedmag 7y ago

Rambler board has asked the management to ask the police to close the criminal case, look into the situation again and file a civil lawsuit if needed: https://www.interfax.ru/russia/688213 https://www.interfax.ru/russia/688213