Cloud Native ComputingDevOpsFeaturedNewsOpen Source

Microsoft Acquires JavaScript Heavyweight npm

Swapnil BhartiyaBy 2762 views
0

npm.inc, the company behind the popular Node Package Manager (npm) is set to be acquired by GitHub. Founded in 2009, npm became extremely popular and is the default package manager for JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.

Despite its popularity and massive user base, the company struggled with monetization from open source.

Microsoft owned GitHub will bring financial stability to npm.inc, which will benefit the vibrant communities that have evolved around the project.

With this acquisition GitHub will invest in the infrastructure and the platform “to ensure that npm is fast, reliable, and scalable,” said Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub.

GitHub will also work on these two areas:

  • Improve the core experience. We will work to improve the everyday experience of developers and maintainers, and support the great work already started on the npm v7 CLI, which will remain free and open source. Some bigger features that we’re excited about are Workspaces and improvements to the publishing and multi-factor authentication experience.
  • Engage with the community. We will actively engage with the JavaScript community to get your ideas and help us define the future of npm.

“GitHub will also integrate npm to improve the security of the open source software supply chain, and enable you to trace a change from a GitHub pull request to the npm package version that fixed it,” added Friedman.

npm.inc offers both free and paid services. Nothing will change with this acquisition. npm.inc, npm inc co-founder Isaac Z. Schlueter assured “Our commitment to that community is to keep the npm registry free for open source development for the foreseeable future, and continue to improve the npm CLI. At GitHub, npm will have the added support and backing of one of the world’s largest companies, behind the world’s largest community of developers.”

You may also like