> The title implies some vote of no confidence by the OpenBSD team regarding Apache

No it doesn't. It says what it says: Apache was removed from base. Now that there is a reasonable alternative with an acceptable license, it is time to move on.

> when in actual fact they're just cleaning up their own mess

You choice of words sure reeks of negativity towards the project. The fact is, skanky old Apache 1.3 has served the project well for a long long time, and it has had a good track record as far as security goes. Keep in mind that code in the base system has been audited, patched and maintained by the project.

So I can see this getting boring pretty fast, but whatever.. on reading the title I wondered "why!", and on reading the article I find a recommendation for nginx. The reason for this appears to be entirely due to licensing in modern (and more comparable) versions of Apache 2.x than anything technical. The article does not make that clear at all.

Apologies if you read so much negativity into my choice of words, it wasn't meant as an attack on OpenBSD, forking unmaintained software, or whatever else, just intended to point out a correction in the way probably half or more of readers will interpret the article – as some kind of indication that Nginx is technically somehow better than Apache

Its not entirely due to licensing. OpenBSD has security patches to Apache that weren't accepted plus the license change. OpenBSD has been maintaining their own branch until the switch.