F5 Halts Russian Sales and Suspends Nginx Contributions Amid Geopolitical Tensions

Recently, several low‑level tools, software, and open‑source projects announced they would cease operations in Russia, prompting developers to call for Nginx to resist restrictions.

One month after the shift in international circumstances, Nginx took unexpected actions that, while surprising, were understandable because they directly affected Russian developers.

On March 15, F5’s CEO François Locoh‑Donou published “Standing Firm in Support of the People of Ukraine,” announcing the cessation of all sales activities in Russia, removal of Russian access to F5 networks, and the suspension of contributions to the Nginx open‑source project.

F5 framed the move as a moral imperative rather than a purely commercial decision, emphasizing support for employees, protection of customers and operations, and provision of higher‑level protection and assistance.

In the “protect customers, services, and operations” dimension, F5 stated that as a global security company it had prepared for escalation, taken decisive action to safeguard business, and fully complied with government authorizations and economic sanctions.

F5 confirmed that it had paused all Russian sales, relocated customer support, cut Russian access to the F5 network, and stopped contributing to Nginx in Russia, while continuing development elsewhere; no code now resides in Russia.

The company also pledged ongoing commitment to Nginx’s development, its community, and the welfare of its Russian employees, while continuously monitoring the rapidly changing situation.

Historically, Nginx was created 20 years ago by Russian programmer Igor Sysoev for the high‑traffic site rambler.ru and released as open source on October 4, 2004.

Renowned for high performance, stability, rich features, simple configuration, and low resource consumption, Nginx serves as an HTTP server, reverse proxy, and mail proxy.

In 2011, Igor Sysoev founded a company of the same name to provide support services.

By February 2019, Nginx overtook Apache HTTPD to become the most widely deployed web server on the Internet, and on March 11, 2019, F5 acquired Nginx for $670 million.

According to Netcraft’s February 2022 report, Nginx added 538,000 domains in the previous month, raising its market share by 26.7 %.

Despite a loss of 12.1 million sites (‑3.2 %) in the same period, Nginx remains the most used web server, powering 31.1 % of sites, and is employed by major platforms such as Baidu, JD.com, Tencent, Taobao, NetEase, Sina, GitHub, Meta, Netflix, and MaxCDN.

The article reflects on the irony that a server originally born in Russia is now unavailable and unmaintainable there, highlighting how open‑source collaboration can be disrupted by geopolitical shifts.

Note: This article is sourced from the internet.