NATS and the CNCF kerfuffle | Derek Collison shares NATS/Synadia story

Derek Collison — creator of NATS and Co-founder & CEO of Synadia — joins the show to dive into the origins, design, and evolution of NATS, a high-performance, open-source messaging system built for modern cloud-native systems and part of the CNCF. Derek shares the story behind NATS, what makes it unique, and unpacks the recent tensions between Synadia and the CNCF over the future of the project. SUBSCRIBE: RSS: https://changelog.fm/rss Apple: https://changelog.fm/apple Spotify: https://changelog.fm/spotify Android: https://changelog.fm/android Overcast: https://changelog.fm/overcast Email: https://changelog.fm/email X: https://x.com/changelog Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/changelog.com Mastodon: https://changelog.social/@changelog SPONSORS: Heroku - **The Next Generation of Heroku "Fir" is coming soon** — Fir is built on a foundation of cloud native technologies and open source standards, ensuring portability, interoperability, and a vibrant ecosystem for your applications. Cloud Native for everyone, for the next decade and beyond. https://www.heroku.com/changelogpodcast Retool - **The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools** — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog https://retool.com/changelog Outshift by Cisco - AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It's a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows. https://agntcy.org LINKS: - https://nats.io - https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/05/01/protecting-nats-and-the-integrity-of-open-source-cncfs-commitment-to-the-community/ - https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2025/05/01/cncf-and-synadia-align-on-securing-the-future-of-the-nats-io-project/ - https://www.synadia.com/blog/nats-server-next-steps CHAPTERS: 00:00 Start the show! 01:19 When did NATS start? 05:48 Huge adoption for NATS 11:52 Ladybird + Swift 16:31 I'm still in the technical trenches of NATS 17:40 We should build a business around this 21:37 Future of modern distributed systems 24:31 Kerfuffle with CNCF 31:11 Was CNCF's blog post a surprise? 36:46 How clear were the requirements and expectations? 47:46 Did you try to take your ball and go home? 53:24 Goals for leaving the CNCF hotel? 59:34 Did NATS turnover the IP and trademark? 1:04:12 Did you sign a clear agreement with terms spelled out? 1:10:35 Commercial BSL fork vs open core 1:14:47 There's SO MUCH nuance in this 1:24:41 Rug pull, not cool. No pay, not OK.