
I think the JavaScript community needs to step up and boycott NPM - calypso
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/01/npm_layoff_staff/
======
keypusher
> "The actual concern I have is that the JavaScript package manager and
> language commons are in the hands of a VC-funded company

I'm not primarily a JS developer, but I guess I just assumed NPM was run by a
non-profit foundation like the Python Software Foundation runs PyPi. So I
started looking into the governance of other significant library repos.
Homebrew actually sets a good example[0], with a clear governance structure.
On the other hand I have no idea who owns RubyGems.org, perhaps a loose
collection of GitHub users called the RubyGems Team [1]. Maven Central (Java)
is owned+operated by Sonatype [2], Packagist (PHP) is owned+operated by
Private Packagist[3], Nuget (C#) is unsurprisingly owned+operated by
Microsoft, and CPAN seems to be governed by the Perl Foundation. According to
modulecounts.com, NPM has more hosted packages than any of the others. It's
also the only one where the registry source code does not seem to be publicly
available, and there are very few full mirrors that don't just proxy upstream
to npmjs.org. Yikes.

[0] [https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-Governance](https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-
Governance)

[1] [https://rubygems.org/pages/about](https://rubygems.org/pages/about)

[2] [https://central.sonatype.org/](https://central.sonatype.org/)

[3] [https://packagist.org/](https://packagist.org/)

[4] [http://www.modulecounts.com/](http://www.modulecounts.com/)

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takinola
The style of this article is really disingenuous. The new leadership at NPM
may (or may not) be acting disrespectfully to the terminated workers but to go
from that to speculating about their financial health just seems unwarranted.
The statement "a company which may, or may not have financial problems" is
meaningless. Every company in the world "may, or may not," have financial
problems. That sentence only serves to impute doubt about the company's
viability while skirting the limits of truthfulness

~~~
xkcd-sucks
It seems to skirt the limits of a nondisclosure agreement, not truth. Also,
analysts infer financial health from terminations, which probably has a larger
effect on the company's success.

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colejohnson66
@mods The actual title is “Nice People Matter? NPM may stand for Not Politely
Managed – job cuts leave staff sore”.

~~~
baud147258
It's too long for the HN title box (I tried to submit the same story
yesterday), but I agree that it should have been closer to the actual title,
like "NPM job cuts leave staff angry"

~~~
calypso
If I could edit it I would. I do however stand by my statement here because I
know first hand how this CEO operates. I worked at his previous startup and he
acted the same way. The same culture, fear, hostility, toxicity was all
present.

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NelsonMinar
I'm grateful for this article. It's been clearly reading on Twitter
#npmlayoffs something bad has been going down but hard to piece the story
together. The Reg puts it together in a relatively straightforward way.

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the_fonz
Capitalism's hubris... co-op workplaces, organized labor and sharing salary
info are musts. We don't need fascism nor communism to solve inequality, just
a shift back to decency and earned respect through workplace action. _Power
concedes nothing without organized resistance._ Violence carries water for the
opposition, so only nonviolent disobedience will be strategically-successful.

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jonny_eh
That title, yikes.

