Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache(pradyunsg.me)

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On Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache¶
2026-04-08
We received helpful feedback that, as of April 2026, the situation
around Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache might not be easy to understand for
users and distribution package maintainers alike.
This is an attempt to help clarify.
The backstory is that the former Varnish Cache FOSS project changed its
name to Vinyl Cache. Please read 20 years old and it is time to get serious(er) if you have not
already.
This document has three parts. The first two parts are jointly approved by all
of the Vinyl Cache Governing Board. The third part is an opinion by two members
only.

What happened since we announced the rename¶
Since we announced the above together with the Varnish Cache 8.0 release,
the former Varnish Cache FOSS team, now Vinyl Cache Team, has been
working hard on making the name change and many related changes happen
until the 9.0 release on 2026-03-16.
Here is a summary of events from our perspective:

The homepage https://vinyl-cache.org continues to serve all content
previously available under https://varnish-cache.org, but the project
name has been changed to Vinyl Cache and a new project identity
(logo, mascot, color scheme) has been established.
Care has been taken to preserve the name Varnish Cache for content
referring to previous releases up to Varnish Cache 8.0.

The authoritative source repository, issues and pull requests have
been migrated from GitHub to a self hosted forgejo instance on
https://code.vinyl-cache.org (see Vinyl Cache has left github). All old tickets
have been preserved and issue numbering continues where it left off
on GitHub.
The GitHub Varnish Cache
Organization and all
repositories have been archived. Repositories have a final commit
updating the README and build scripts to point to the new repository,
see for example The Varnish Cache
README.
All references to Varnish in the Vinyl Cache source
code have
been replaced. See also information on the rename in the 9.0 release
notes.
As with the homepage, care has been taken to preserve the name
Varnish Cache in historic documents as well as not to change valid
references to copyright and authorship of Varnish Software.

Mailing lists have been
renamed and moved to the vinyl-cache.org domain, but their historic content
has been preserved.
Varnish Software has created a new repository with the name
“Varnish” on GitHub, which
continues to use the name “Varnish Cache”.
The last common commit of this new repository and what is now Vinyl
Cache is 63806461a205a11da12deb21051f654e35acee9e (Vinyl
Cache,
Varnish Cache by Varnish
Software),
the next
commit
on the Varnish Software repository does not exist in Vinyl Cache.
Note that GitHub fork
tracking
has not been used.

Varnish Software has forked the VTest
project, which provides
the varnishtest program. Likewise, fork tracking has not been used.
Varnish Software has created a new homepage for the relaunched
Varnish Cache.
For https://www.varnish-cache.org/, the FOSS project had put in place a 301
redirect to https://vinyl-cache.org/ before the 9.0 launch. After the launch,
which was agreed upon as the “demarcation point” for the completed rename and
split, Varnish Software momentarily put up a simple page with “click here for
Varnish Cache, click here for Vinyl Cache”.
At some point before 2026-04-02, Varnish Software has replaced it with a 301
redirect to https://www.varnish.org/index.html.

Telling apart Varnish Cache and Vinyl Cache¶
So, confusingly, there is now Varnish Cache and Vinyl Cache, so which is
which?

What is Vinyl Cache?¶
We regard the Vinyl Cache FOSS project as the continuation of the former
Varnish Cache FOSS project for the following reasons:

The maintainer team is unchanged and even continues to have a member
employed by Varnish Software, based on a long standing
agreement
that each of the companies responsible for most of the core code
contributions nominate one maintainer seat. The Vinyl Cache
maintainer roles are currently taken by:

Poul Henning Kamp
Walid Boudebouda
Nils Goroll

The day-to-day operation of the Vinyl Cache project continues to
function as before, with the same review processes, same bi-weekly
bug wash, same main responsibilities etc.
As explained before, https://vinyl-cache.org/ has the same content as
https://www.varnish-cache.org/ used to have, except for the rename.
Everything is tracked in
git.
Even the bug fix releases Varnish Cache
8.0.1
and Varnish Cache
6.0.17
were taken from branches
8.0
and
6.0
on the Vinyl Cache repository.

For all practical purposes, we think it is fair to say that the Vinyl
Cache Project is the former Varnish Cache FOSS project continued, just
under a new name and with a governance model which we wanted for years.
We said it would be a rename, and it is a rename

What is the new Varnish Cache?¶
To quote https://www.varnish.org/index.html:

Varnish Cache is a downstream distribution of the Vinyl Cache open
source project, delivering a stable supported LTS release with
additional tooling and features on top.

The new Varnish Cache is governed by Varnish Software. The repository is
located under the Varnish Software GitHub
organization. The maintainers are
Varnish Software Employees.
The code base already contains commits which would be highly contended if
proposed for merge into Vinyl Cache. This may be a regarded as a benefit, so
this statement is meant to be informational, not qualitative.
Varnish Software has a trademark policy which applies to Varnish Cache.

Should you choose Vinyl Cache or Varnish Cache?¶
It is up to you and we want to be careful not to make a recommendation.
But we are convinced that it is fair to state that the Vinyl Cache FOSS project
is the continuation of the former Varnish Cache FOSS project and that, for all
intends and purposes, the new Varnish Cache by Varnish Software is a new
downstream project, with different governance, new code and different coding
standards.
Again, this can be seen as an advantage or not, this judgement is up to
everyone to make for themselves.
But the new Varnish Cache by Varnish Software project is by no means the
continuation of the former Varnish Cache FOSS project. Vinyl Cache is that
continuation.

Our opinion¶
Above, we made an effort to only stick to verifiable facts. But we also have an
opinion.
This section only represents the opinion of slink and phk and is not shared by
all of the Vinyl Cache Governing Board.

You should think about Varnish/Vinyl as you do about MySQL/MariaDB¶
There are three distinct entities:

Varnish Cache before the corporate takeover
Repos (archived) at: https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache

Vinyl Cache
Repos (live) at: https://code.vinyl-cache.org/vinyl-cache/vinyl-cache

Varnish Cache after the corporate takeover.
Repos (live) at: https://github.com/varnish/varnish

A and B are the same thing: The independent FOSS project you have
known and relied on for twenty years, which only exists to create
high-quality Free and Open Source Software, forced to change our
name.
C is a brand new fork of A, presenting as a FOSS project, but 100%
controlled by a single for-profit corporation, using our old name, covered by a
trademark policy.
In other words: Exactly the same situation, as when Oracle bought
MySQL and that FOSS project was forced to rename to MariaDB.

History does not repeat, […] it merely rhymes.– (probably) Theodor Reik