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Loralighte
Loralighte

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This is Really Bad

There has recently been a huge development in the open-source world I refuse to stand for. A disturbance in the force, NPM was acquired by GitHub. This is a really bad deal. Now yes I am a common open-source advocate but I am fine with proprietary software as long as it chooses to be compatible. NPM joining GitHub is the worst thing to happen to open source, as NPM is then also owned by Microsoft as they own GitHub.

I don't care that much about Microsoft, and this is NOT the first thing they bought or made that is open source and will most likely keep it open-source. I have seen worries that "they can't be trusted" because of things like the new Xbox using proprietary cards. No, that isn't what worries me. What worries me is that Microsoft will almost now own the world of JavaScript development. Not that just NPM is the largest JavaScript tool, but things are much much worse. TypeScript, a technology that has a high amount of love and a huge userbase. PYPL putting them at 11th place, higher than Golang at 14th place, and not far behind other languages like Kotlin and C/C++. The 2019 Stack Overflow survey shows that TypeScript is on the top 3 most loved languages, far above JavaScript itself.

The ownership of GitHub affects millions of developers, then there is TypeScript, then there is Visual Studio Code, and now NPM. This puts a very severe strangle-hold on JavaScript and if Microsoft wants to monopolize it, there is nothing stopping it. "But Node isn't owned by Microsoft!" you might say, and that is true. It is owned at least in part by the Linux Foundation and in full with the OpenJS Foundation. However we are talking about Microsoft, owners of TypeScript, F# (at least in part), C#, and a thing called Verona which seems to be a Rust clone, what's to say they won't just make their own version of NodeJS? Or that they won't just buy it?

Right now all we can do is speculate, watch, and prepare. We do not know what will happen, and we might be able to trust them, we just don't know, and that is why this is bad. It is not that we can't trust them, we don't know if we can.

Top comments (3)

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jhermann profile image
Jürgen Hermann

When software is eating the 🌐, Microsoft is eating FOSS.

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alexisjc profile image
Alexis JC.

Hi ! Can you explain or give example of what can going wrong with this situation ?
You talk a lot about trust, but trust about what ?

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kailyons profile image
Loralighte

Trust how Microsoft will use or monetize NPM and open-source. Another main part I feel like I missed the mark on was the point of not knowing if, I did mention it but I feel like it slipped. The main point is "We are unsure if we can trust them" not "what will go wrong" considering that Microsoft is a proprietary corporation at heart!