
IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript - owenwil
https://github.com/iojs/io.js
======
randall
Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been
hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the
fork is necessary.

~~~
elisee
I don't have very specific details as I'm a bystander too but it seems Node
has been stuck in 0.10.x land since early 2013
([http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/](http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/))
while Node 0.12 and 1.0 releases were being talked about well over a year ago
by former BDFL Isaac Schlueter (now at npm). Joyent, the current project
stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and
don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much.

One of the many symptoms of that slow development process is that Node.js is
basically running an unsupported version of V8
([https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328](https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328)).

From what I've read, node-forward is/was only meant as a fork in the GitHub
sense: they'd try to get their stuff merged back into node mainline. The
GitHub fork has since been made private ([https://github.com/node-
forward/discussions/issues/7](https://github.com/node-
forward/discussions/issues/7)) and they're working to set up a proper
governance model so that the community can truly be in charge. Joyent has
reacted (I believe, it might have been in the works prior to node-forward) by
proposing a node advisory board ([https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-
board](https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board)) but it seems to be
too little too late for at least some of the people behind node-forward (I've
read what seem like irreconcilable disagreements about how it should be run).

I have no idea what (if anything) io.js is in relation to node-forward or if
the same people are behind it. Can't find any announcements / endorsements on
Twitter, so maybe it was just posted here before whoever is behind it were
ready to go live.

~~~
scljstcwombat
> Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable
> release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating
> very much.

They probably don't want to publicly call out one of the core committers whose
promised work is lagging. Or admit that the previous project lead was a poor
choice who let it stagnate (but yet is inexplicably in the "Joyent did a bad
job" camp). What good would that do anyone, apart from satisfy our boundless
curiosity?

------
mappu
Node is the obvious leader amongst V8 shells, but there's also

\-
[https://github.com/attractivechaos/k8](https://github.com/attractivechaos/k8)
and discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913950)

\- [http://silkjs.net/](http://silkjs.net/)

\- [https://code.google.com/p/teajs/](https://code.google.com/p/teajs/)

\-
[https://github.com/samlecuyer/sorrow.js](https://github.com/samlecuyer/sorrow.js)

\-
[https://github.com/tlrobinson/narwhal](https://github.com/tlrobinson/narwhal)

\- d8 (bundled with v8 source)

Not counting other CommonJS-compatible platforms, or javascript shells using
engines other than V8, or server-side javascript application frameworks

------
thomasfromcdnjs
From my Twitter feed...

"Looks like a Node.js fork called io.js is happening, with some of Node's key
contributors. 😮 [http://github.com/iojs/io.js](http://github.com/iojs/io.js) "

[https://twitter.com/devongovett/status/538131893682569216](https://twitter.com/devongovett/status/538131893682569216)

------
tjholowaychuk
Wahoo, hope people are more open to change this time around – hope it works
out!

------
stormbrew
40 minutes, 8 points, got to the front page, and... why? Is there a story
behind this fork?

~~~
benatkin
There doesn't appear to be much of one, yet. The latest commit by indutny was
just a commit to node that the owner of the iojs GitHub organization pushed to
GitHub. There are no public members of the iojs organization. Even the name of
the repo, "evented I/O for v8 javascript" is the same. All that's been
introduced here is a new name, io.js.

~~~
cwmma
from the issues that have been opened [1] and closed [2] it looks like
indutny, jonathanong, and rvagg are involved, aka all people involved with
node forward

1\.
[https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/5](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/5)
2\.
[https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/7](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/7)

~~~
benatkin
Yes this appears to be the main thing at play right now. A small number of
serious node hackers are contributing to io.js. This could be big, but it's
too early for me to tell.

------
scljstcwombat
It's raining node forks: [https://github.com/io-forward/io-
forward](https://github.com/io-forward/io-forward)

~~~
throwaway90447
Fork Yeah!

------
misterdai
I'm finding the situation with Node.js quite frustrating. There doesn't appear
to be much communication as to what's going on with the project.

It's also odd that the Node Advisory Board was supposed to meet on the 20th
(2014-11-20). Chris Williams tweeted that it was about to start [1] but no
minutes have appeared and I can't find any mention of what happened during the
meeting.

[1] [https://nodejs.org/advisory-
board/2014-11-06/minutes.html#mi...](https://nodejs.org/advisory-
board/2014-11-06/minutes.html#minutes_md_next_meeting))

~~~
voodootikigod
Sorry for the delay, it takes a while to polish the minutes and then gain
consensus from the rest of the group about the final minutes. The US Holiday
didn't help much either (as well as finalizing RobotsConf, life, etc) They are
here now: [https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-
board/blob/master/...](https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-
board/blob/master/meetings/2014-11-20/minutes.md)

~~~
misterdai
Thanks Chris, probably read into the delay a little just because I could find
any mention of the meeting actually taking place or not, apart from your tweet
about it starting.

Understandable though with all the other stuff you've got going on. Cheers :)

------
Skywing
With what purpose? What's the significance of this? node is also node with
many of the key contributors.

------
jackbravo
@Mikeal has a couple of posts on the subject:

\- [https://medium.com/@mikeal/on-corporate-ownership-of-open-
so...](https://medium.com/@mikeal/on-corporate-ownership-of-open-
source-786ebd15847e) \- [https://medium.com/node-js-
javascript/fragmentation-7e87d28f...](https://medium.com/node-js-
javascript/fragmentation-7e87d28f60fe)

~~~
scljstcwombat
Ah yes, Mikeal, whose capability of double-think is so well-developed that he
can claim to not understand what "fragmentation" means while at the same time
advocating to do precisely that -
[https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/9](https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/9)

I swear Chris Dickinson is the only sane one in this whole mess. Possibly
because he's new. Possibly because his employer is the only one involved
that's not beholden to VC money and expectations of return.

------
sreejithr
10000+ commits and 574 contributors. Boy, this has to be good. Can somebody
explain?

~~~
ykl
It's a fork of node.js

------
almogK
I think it comes down to politics, I feel its always better to have a company
run and support an open source framework as long as their listen to the
community and letting the community be a part of the framework.

------
kylequest
If you are curious about node-forward vs io.js take a look at the end of this
page [http://nodeforward.org](http://nodeforward.org) to see how they are
related :-)

------
elixir1
As a dev do we continue to use node or change to the fork?

------
jpincheira
hey, catchy name, for some ms I thought of iOS... maybe it's just me doing too
much iOS development in the last months.

------
hayksaakian
Can one of the 8 (so far) up-voters tell me whats interesting here?

The linked readme tells little.

\-----

Now 25 pts with just as much explanation....

\-----

As of 48 points, this (1) is the most relvant and informative explanation, but
still has nothing to do directly with the linked OP.

(1)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669743)

~~~
elisee
Compare with [https://github.com/joyent/node](https://github.com/joyent/node),
similar readme and commit numbers. Looks like a node.js fork. (EDIT: maybe you
already understood that, I thought it might have been a different thing from
node.js altogether until I saw the repositories shared a README/history)

------
_almosnow
With the few forks and stances that everyone is taking now, I really hope that
an amazing project like Node doesn't get f __* up by becoming fragmented and
multiple different "versions" appearing.

~~~
Skywing
_sigh_ time to start looking into Go

~~~
logicchains
Or Dart. It's a lot closer to node and JS than Go (it uses asynchronous IO),
and can more easily be used across both the server and client (Go's
compilation-to-Javascript support is less developed). It's also surprisingly
fast for a dynamic language, and has the generics Go lacks.

~~~
Bahamut
Should also mention that Dart is faster than Node - it benefits from Google's
development of V8, and the language design was built for optimization while
taking a lot of the good parts from JS.

~~~
Pharohbot
V8 Turbofan using asm.js AOT that is in beta right now otherwise.

