[Перевод] [Updating] Nginx's office is being searched due to Rambler's lawsuit. The complaintant press service confirmed the suit
According to one of the employees Nginx’s Moscow office is being searched due to the criminal case brought by Rambler (the official response of the company’s press office to this issue and confirmation of claims against Nginx is below). The photo of the search warrant is provided as the evidence of the criminal case initiated on December 4, 2019 under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 'Violation of Author’s and Neighboring Rights'.
It is assumed the complaintant is Rambler, and the defendant is still an 'unidentified group of persons', and in the long run — the founder of Nginx, Igor Sysoev.
The point of the claim: Igor started working on Nginx as an employee of Rambler and only after the tool became popular he founded a separate company and attracted investments.
It is not clear why Rambler revised its 'property' only 15 years later.
The first information about the searches and the criminal case was published on Twitter by @igorippolitov, apparently an employee of Nginx. According to Ippolitov, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs forced him to remove the tweet, but there are still screenshots and photos of the search warrant, which are now distributed online.
Судя по всему в офисе Nginx обыск. Говорят, что они украли все у Рамблера. Иск, вероятно, со стороны Рамблера. Если это правда — история странная. В айти-среде есть много свидетелей того, как развивался nginx, непонятно зачем этот иск https://t.co/8n5lgSdxTj
— bobuk (@bobuk) December 12, 2019
So far there has been no official confirmation by Sysoyev or Nginx officials that the search was conducted. Perhaps this is due to the peculiarities of the criminal proceedings.
If the document photographed by Nginx’s employee is real, the criminal case was initiated under parts B and C of the Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which means 'on an especially large scale'… 'committed by a group of persons by previous concert or by an organised group':
shall be punishable by compulsory labour for a term of up to five years, or by deprivation of liberty for a term of up to six years accompanied by a fine in the amount of up to five hundred thousand roubles or in the amount of a wage/salary or other income of the convicted person for a period of up to three years or without such.
Thus, Sysoyev and other founders are at risk not only of losing the project, but also up to 6 years in prison.
UPD:
From an interview with Igor Sysoyev to Hacker magazine on Habr (based on Windev’s comment to this news):
— Interestingly, you had been working both for Rambler and on nginx. Rambler didn’t have any rights? It’s such a delicate question. How did you manage to keep the rights to the project?— Yes, it’s a pretty delicate question. Of course, you are not the only one interested in this question, we also have worked on it quite thoroughly. In Russia, the legislation is arranged in such a way that the company owns what is done within the labor duties or under a separate contract. So, there should be a contract with a person, where it would be said: it is necessary to develop a software product. At Rambler I worked as a system administrator, developing in my spare time, and the product was released under the BSD license as open source software from the very beginning. In Rambler, nginx began to be used when the main functionality was ready. Moreover, even the first use of nginx was not in Rambler, but in Rate.ee and zvuki.ru.
UPD #2:
According to unconfirmed information, Sysoev and Konovalov were apprehended.
