NATS Trademark Dispute Escalates: Synadia Reclaims Project, CNCF Fights Back

A legal battle is brewing over the trademark and marketing of the widely used NATS message server. After Synadia, the former owner, reclaimed the software from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the CNCF is now seeking to have the NATS trademark and logo deleted. The CNCF argues Synadia relinquished all rights in 2018 and must adhere to agreements. Synadia counters that the CNCF failed to foster community involvement, with most contributions originating from Synadia, and proposes switching NATS to a Business Source License (BSL). The CNCF rejects the BSL as non-open source, emphasizing its commitment to open-source values. The core dispute revolves around ownership, trademark rights, and licensing, potentially leading to a project fork similar to the Terraform/OpenTofu split.