I think we should look at this story as an opportunity to look at open source and free software, and evaluate where we are.<p>The success has been, in a way, beyond expectation: Linux is everywhere and the world is using Github to publish and contribute to open source code.<p>Another way to look at it is: The Cloud and interest of big players have corrupted the idea of what free software is.<p>From an architect point of view what the CNCF is was always obvious: it serves the interests of businesses separated in membership tiers who provide either "a cloud", software that run in the cloud or big time users of those software.<p>This is not new, there were others before like The Open Group who develop "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." They were the certifying body for the UNIX trademark, and things like X Window or TOGAF.<p>The deal of the CNCF is clear: if you are a startup and you want to be in the club, you put your code under our umbrella, you pay the fees, surrender to our politics and we put you in our landscape.<p>It seems something went wrong between Synadia and those interests. NATS could never graduate but now they are finding out that "You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave".<p>Synadia were told they can't graduate because there is no real community and now that they want to pull out the CNCF is dragging them through the mud because "they are killing the community".<p>So I would love to see the CNCF, as a defender of open source and the community, send the same letter and take legal action against some of its other members for not publishing their core software under an approved open source license, including: Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Boeing, Google, Huawei, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc.<p>That would be fun.