NPM Inc, which controls the development of the NPM package manager and maintains the NPM repository, has announced the sale of its business to GitHub Inc (which is currently owned by Microsoft), which operates as an independent business unit (the amount of the transaction for the purchase has not been disclosed).
The acquisition is said to have resulted in a change of ownership that will not affect the NPM repository , which will continue to exist and remain publicly and freely available to open-source developers. Development of the NPM package manager will continue with additional resources, which may incentivize more active development, as GitHub intends to work actively with the JavaScript community to gather ideas and determine the future of NPM.
Regarding the changes Microsoft has planned after the acquisition is completed, it is mentioned that the main development vectors will be: increasing the reliability, scalability, and productivity of the repository and infrastructure, as well as improving the convenience of the daily work of developers and those who work with the package manager.
Of the important innovations expected in version 7 of NPM, the workspaces are named (which allow to add dependencies of several packages in a single package for installation in a single step), improve the process of publishing packages and expand support for multi-factor authentication.
To increase the security of package publishing and delivery processes, there are plans to integrate NPM into the GitHub infrastructure.
The integration will also allow the use of the GitHub interface to prepare and deploy NPM packages : changes to packages can be tracked on GitHub from the receipt of a pull request to the release of a new version of an npm package.
The vulnerability detection and vulnerability reporting tools provided by GitHub in the repositories will also apply to NPM packages. The GitHub sponsor service will be available to fund the work of NPM package authors and companions.
In addition, it is mentioned that Isaac Z. Schlueter (the creator of NPM) will continue working on the project and will be provided with additional resources and a more relaxed work environment.
In the announcement made by him, he shares the following:
What I really didn't expect at the beginning of the acquisition process was how much I would sincerely like everyone I met on GitHub, starting with my initial conversations with Nat, as well as everyone on the team that he has trained ...
The founder of NPM believes that, as part of GitHub, NPM will receive additional support from one of the world's largest companies behind the largest developer community. Currently, the NPM repository serves over 1.3 million packages, used by approximately 12 million developers. It sees roughly 75 billion downloads per month, and this number is constantly growing.
Let's remember that last year NPM Inc experienced a change in leadership, a series of layoffs, and a search for investors.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding NPM's future and a lack of confidence that the company would advocate for the interests of the community, not investors, a group of employees led by a former NPM technical director founded the Entropic package repository.
The new project was designed to eliminate the dependence of the JavaScript/Node.js ecosystem on a single company that completely controls the development of a package manager and maintains a repository.
According to the founders of Entropic, the community does not have the ability to hold NPM Inc accountable for the actions taken, and the profit orientation prevents the implementation of the primary activities of the community, but does not bring money and requires additional resources, features, as a support for digital signature verification.
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