Nginx founders complain over Russian police raid over alleged copyright violation

Police raid on Nginx came after Russia's Rambler Group filed a copyright violation case against Nginx earlier this month - nine months after the company was sold to F5 Networks

The Russian co-founders of web server firm Nginx Inc, acquired by F5 Networks in March 2019, have hit out at their treatment during police raids on their homes and offices in Moscow last week.

According to Nginx co-founder Maxim Konovalov, his apartment and the home of co-founder Igor Sysoev's were raided in the early morning of Thursday 12^th December by armed police, who seized their mobile phones and other electronic devices. Konovalov added that they were also interrogated by the police for several hours.

The raids came after Russian company Rambler Group filed a copyright violation case against Nginx, claiming that it was the rightly owner of the Nginx web server's source code.

Yandex, Russia's biggest internet firm, described the police action as a 'very bad signal'

This was initially created by Sysoev in the early 2000s when he was employed by Rambler. He claims he developed the web server software in his spare time, releasing the code to open source. The Nginx company was set up almost a decade later to provide services for the popular open-source application.

Rambler Group is the third largest internet firm in Russia and the parent company of Rambler.ru, one of Russia's most popular search engines.

Nginx became a subsidiary of Seattle-based F5 Network in March 2019 following a $670 million acquisition. That came one month after, Nginx surpassed Apache HTTPD to become the most widely deployed web server software on the internet.

The dispute between Rambler and Nginx centres around Nginx's open-source web server code. Rambler claims that the code belongs to it, not Nginx or F5, because Sysoev worked for Rambler as a system administrator when he developed the technology.

Sysoev released the Nginx server's source code as open source in 2004. It is still free and its development is managed via the open-source community.

Sysoev has never denied that he developed Nginx while working at Rambler. But he claims that he worked on it in his free time, outside of office hours, and says that Rambler wasn't aware of it for years. According to Sysoev, Rambler started using Nginx only after a colleague inquired about it.

Many leading IT industry associations in Russia have condemned the police raid on Nginx founders. They have also published an open letter on the Govorit Moskva radio station's website.

Yandex, Russia's biggest internet firm, said that the police action sent a "very bad signal".

"We fear for our freedom," Konovalov told Bloomberg. "Rambler didn't pay attention to us in the preceding years."

He added that he and Sysoev would not flee Russia. "We will stay and we will fight," he said.

Rambler said it had ceded its legal rights to bring copyright claims against Nginx to a Cyprus-based holding company, Lynwood Investments CY Ltd.

Lynwood said it had informed authorities about the situation, and they decided to open a criminal case against Nginx.