Varnish Cache 8.0 (and bonus project news)

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

Varnish 8.0 here is here: 

	https://varnish-cache.org/releases/rel8.0.0.html

and here are some news about the project behind it:

20 years old and it is time to get serious(er)
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Slagelse, 2025-09-15

This coming february 22nd, The Varnish Cache Project will officially
be 20 years old.  We consider the first surviving commit from the
subversion-to-git conversion the official birthday of the Project.

This is as good as any excuse to take stock and make some changes
so we are ready for the next 20 years.

Open Source is not what it used to be:  The EU has launched a
broadside of directives against software related industries, and
while they have gone to great lengths to carve out a niche for Free
and Open Source Software, they have wisely not chosen to make it a
"Get out of jail for free" card to slap "FOSS" sticker on something.

Concepts like "Maintainers", "Stewards" and "Contributors" of FOSS
have formal legal definitions now, and we need to find out how we
can and want to fit in.

Which again means we have to find out who makes that kind of decisions
for the project, both now and in the future.

Many successful FOSS projects have spawned "Foundations" which are
typically tax-exempt benefical/charity corporations in some country
or other, but we have decided to not go there.  For one thing, none
of us want to take on such a task, but more importantly:  We're are
less than impressed by how well that model seems to work in practice.

We will instead form a voluntary association, a "Forening", under
the laws of Denmark, with bylaws that set out what the goal is
(develop, maintain and distribute the software), who gets to make
the decisions (a governing board appointed by the members), who can
become members (anybody but subject to approval by the members) and
that the association cannot ever hold or handle any money.

The commented bylaws of the association will be ratified by the
founders and made public this autumn, and the first general assembly
will be on Monday February 23rd 2026 - hopefully with many membership
applications to approve - more about that when we publish the bylaws.

We will also, at the same time, reluctantly change the name of the project.

The Varnish Cache FOSS software was initiated and sponsored by the
Norvegian newspaper Verdens Gang.  They hired a company called
"Linpro" to handle the logistics and me to write the code.

>From Linpro grew the company Varnish Software, and if anybody had,
they had earned the right to use "Varnish" in their name commercially. 

I was deeply worried about the potential for confusion and line
drawing issues between the commercial entity and the FOSS project,
and as Varnish Software have grown to become a huge international
company, those worries materialized.

I thought I had an verbal agreement with them, that "Varnish Cache"
was the FOSS project and "Varnish Software" was the commercial
entitity, but the current position of Varnish Software's IP-lawyers
is that nobody can use "Varnish Cache" in any context, without their
explicit permission.

The need to get permission from Varnish Software to use our own
name has already caused some potential contributors and supporters
from engaging with the FOSS project.

We have tried to negotiatiate with Varnish Software for many months
about this issue, but their IP-Lawyers still insist that Varnish
Software owns the Varnish Cache name, and at most we have being
offered a strictly limited, subject to their veto, permission
for the FOSS project to use the "Varnish Cache" name.

We cannot live with that:  We are independent FOSS project with our own name.

So we will change the name of the project.

The new association and the new project will be named "The Vinyl
Cache Project", and this release 8.0.0, will be the last under the
"Varnish Cache" name.  The next release, in March will be under the
new name, and will include compatility scripts, to make the
transition as smooth as possible for everybody.

I want to make it absolutely clear that this is 100% a mess of my
making:  I should have insisted on a firm written agreement about
the name sharing, but I did not.

I will also state for the record, that there are no hard feelings
between Varnish Software and the FOSS project.

Varnish Software has always been, and still is, an important and
valued contributor to the FOSS project, but sometimes even friends
can make a mess of a situation.

On behalf of the Varnish Cache Project,

Poul-Henning Kamp

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.