Nginx will be rebuilt in Russia

Part of the development team of the world’s most popular web server for hosting Nginx sites returned to Russia and launched the Angie project, which will actually become an independent fork of the Nginx code. Investments in the project at the first stage amounted to $ 1 million. The American F5, which owns Nginx, left the Russian Federation due to hostilities in Ukraine. The new company will also support Nginx users in Russia. Experts believe that there will be demand for the solution – in the country, Nginx accounted for more than 60% of the market.

A number of developers of the world’s most popular Nginx web server returned from the US to Russia and founded their own company, a source in the IT market told Kommersant.

In the SPARK-Interfax database, Kommersant found that on July 21, Web Server LLC was established in Moscow with an authorized capital of 500 thousand rubles. and the main activity is “development of computer software”. On October 10, the company applied for registration of the Angie trademark.

Among the co-owners of Web Server LLC is the ex-head of the Nginx Unit server development team Valentin Bartenev, who worked at Nginx from 2011 to 2022. Other co-owners – Ivan Poluyanov, Oleg Mamontov, Ruslan Ermilov (known for his work on the FreeBSD operating system) – are also former employees of Nginx Inc.

The free Nginx server powers 27.3% of all sites on the Internet, more than any other product, according to Netcraft data. The first version of Nginx was created in 2002–2004 by Igor Sysoev, then a Rambler system administrator. In 2011, Nginx Inc. was created to develop commercial products, in 2019 it was bought by the American F5 for $650 million.

Rambler claimed its rights to the web server, then, as part of litigation, they switched to Lynwood Investments, associated with Alexander Mamut. According to her statement, a criminal case was initiated on copyright infringement, searches took place in the Moscow office of Nginx Inc. and at the addresses of residence of Igor Sysoev and Maxim Konovalov. Nginx developers were publicly supported by Yandex, Mail ru Group (now VK) and other Russian IT companies (see Kommersant dated December 13, 2019). In June 2020, the case was dismissed. Lynwood tried to challenge the exclusive rights to the commercial version of Nginx in the US, but the judge considered the arguments unfounded (see Kommersant dated April 2, 2021). Igor Sysoev left F5 in January 2022 for personal reasons. After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, F5 stopped sales in Russia and removed Nginx code storage from the country. The press service of F5 told Kommersant that the company “is not associated with any Nginx projects in Russia and does not approve of them.”

In Web Server, Kommersant clarified that Igor Sysoev was not involved in the new project. Angie is a fork (an independent offshoot) from Nginx, the company explained.

The solution will be distributed under an open license. The investment in the project at the first stage amounted to $1 million. Web Server is ready to support Nginx users and integrate Angie into partner products, Zaur Abasmirzoev, the company’s CEO, told Kommersant. According to him, “it would be reasonable” to include Angie in the register of domestic software. It is not yet planned to adapt Angie to Russian Linux distributions, “but if during development it turns out that this can be easily done, Angie will also appear on Astra Linux,” the top manager added.

In Russia, the share of the Nginx web server accounts for more than 60% of the market, says Denis Khadaskov, commercial director of R-Style Softlab: “Among the most famous solutions are the Yandex search engine, Avito, well-known foreign social networks.” The purpose of creating Angie may be to take a share in the emerging Russian open source market, Mr. Khadaskov believes.

Alexey Smirnov, head of the board of directors of Basalt SPO (developing an OS based on Linux), believes that the decision may be requested from state-owned companies and departments against the backdrop of a presidential decree banning the use of foreign services for critical information infrastructure from 2025. In his opinion, if Angie enters the register of Russian software, the solution will be able to take a significant share in the market.

Yuri Litvinenko, Nikita Korolev