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Julio Lozovei
Julio Lozovei

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GitHub acquires npm, Inc.

Yesterday, March 16th, Isaac published on the npm blog that GitHub will be acquiring the package manager. Also, there's a nice blog post on GitHub's blog, written by Nat.

And, practically, what does that means for us?

Well, after seeing the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft - where people changed their VCS to GitLab or BitBucket - I believe people may replace npm to yarn. yarn is on the game since 2016 and in the past few years it has overlaped npm on usage, security and speed (as theirselves claims). Back in the day I remember to see those posts about "how yarn is faster than npm" or "how yarn is more secure than npm".

Competition always lead to improving services, and personally I see npm getting better and better as time time flies. Today, most people yet think about technology/tools itself, and not what you can do with them.

In my opinion...

Today I don't see a huge difference between the managers, and I believe npm is on the rise of overlap yarn - Isaac said that npm's v7 (it's getting close!) and v8 are already being planned, and they'll be focused on experience and speed. So we can expect nice things on the move.

In 2020, I see a bright future for npm - talking about the startup and the service as well. šŸŽ‰

Top comments (5)

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Theofanis Despoudis

Iā€™ m looking not only for npm alternatives but github alternatives as apparently github can block you for no apparent reasons and remove all your work

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Julio Lozovei

I know GitHub's trade controls affected/blocked users from Iran, Syria and Crimea. But, unfortunately, it's a law issue. As with any development platform, unfortunately we are subject to that.

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Theofanis Despoudis • Edited

It's a law issue from the US. I'm not living there so I would like to have a backup plan.

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jlozovei profile image
Julio Lozovei

I also don't live there (I live in Brazil), but since I'm using an US-based platform, it makes me follow those restrictions.

But sure, we all need a backup plan for those situations! As you find one, it would be nice if you share with us.

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Theofanis Despoudis • Edited

AFIK, non US-Based Git platforms include Bitbucket. Then you have the option to self-host using
gitbucket or gitea.