NewsBY RabIT Solutions
The company’s CEO Nat Friedman announced on the 16th of March that GitHub has acquired NPM, the world’s largest software registry.
Excited to announce that @npmjs will be joining GitHub, and honored to have the chance to serve the millions of JavaScript developers who rely on npm!https://t.co/YS34mkI6yR pic.twitter.com/BLy83zWVbt
— Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) March 16, 2020
The npm Registry is a public collection of packages, open-source code for Node.js, front-end web apps, mobile apps, robots, routers, and countless other needs of the JavaScript community. The registry was created in 2009 to help JavaScript developers easily share packaged modules of code. Since then, it has largely contributed to the expansion of JS technology and its community as well.
GitHub itself is one of the world’s largest software development platforms that provides hosting for software version control using Git. Microsoft acquired the company back in 2018. At first, the developer community was concerned about the future of the platform and its open source projects.
Since then, Microsoft hasn’t done anything to risk losing the trust of the GitHub community. On the contrary, they have added new features to aid the community such as Actions and Projects.
Nonetheless, the same concern rises again now that GitHub has acquired npm. The largest one is that Microsoft now controls an overwhelming part of the JavaScript ecosystem, which has always been open source.
Of course, the company promises to keep things the way they are and only improve on user experience and introduce new features.
In the announcement Friedman promises that npm “will always be available and always be free”. Their key focus after closing the deal will be to:
- Invest in the registry infrastructure and platform. This is crucial because of the rapidly growing JavaScript ecosystem. They promise they will make the investments necessary to maintain speed, reliability and scalability.
- Improve the core experience. Improve the everyday experience of developers and maintainers, and support the ongoing work. They also promise to introduce some bigger features, Workspaces and improvements to the publishing and multi-factor authentication experience.
- Engage with the community. Engage with the JavaScript community to get ideas and help define the future of npm.
GitHub will be hosting a Reddit AMA to answer further npm-related questions in the coming days.
RabIT Solutions
RabIT is an innovative software engineering company from Hungary. Our goal is to help startups and enterprises drive growth through technology innovation and make a real impact in their industries.
Code quality and transparency are our main priorities throughout each project.
