I worked there before and after the acquisition. F5 Security was woefully incompetent. We spent 3 months trying to get approval for a web hook from Gitlab -> Slack, including endless documents (Threat Model Assessment), and meetings - god, the meetings - at one point on a call with 35 people. So I feel Maxim’s pain trying to deal with that team at F5.

On the other hand nginx core developers (the Russians) were arrogant to the point of considering anyone else as inferior and unworthy of their attention or respect, unless they contributed to nginx oss. They managed that project secretively and rewrote most “outside” contributions. They also ignored security issues - one internal developer spotted security issues with NGINX Unit (a failed oss project 20 years out of date before it started) and was told to fix the issues quietly and not to mention “security” anywhere in the issue messages or commit history.

So I can imagine exactly how these meetings would have gone, I’m sure it was the last straw!