Nat Friedman (GitHub CEO) announced that GitHub has signed the acquisition npm agreement, and said that after npm join GitHub will continue to provide public registry services for free.
npm spelling for the Node Package Manager, is the JavaScript Package Manager. Ever since the first release will be well received ten years ago, it is now the largest developer of the world's ecosystems. Up to now, npm has provided more than 1.3 million packages to more than 12 million developers, these packages to be downloaded each month a total of 75 billion times.
Github's CEO Nat Friedman mentioned priorities after the completion of the acquisition is in the article:
- Provide registry services for the better infrastructure and platform to ensure npm faster, more reliable and has a more powerful scalability
- Improved core experience
- JavaScript maintain a positive interaction with the community
The future will be integrated into the GitHub npm to enhance the security of open source software supply chain, and allow users to track changes to the package from GitHub PR version of npm fix the problem.
Some future prospects after the acquisition of:
- Continue to use npm Pro Teams and Enterprise hosting private registry paying customers, support
- Future customers will pay npm private npm package moved to GitHub Packages Standard Package , so npm JavaScript to focus on becoming a large public registry
Open source vendors worry
For this acquisition behavior of GitHub, developers have commented: Microsoft through the acquisition of GitHub took over the entire open source ecosystem, through the acquisition of npm took over the entire ecosystem JavaScript, Visual Studio Code occupied by the machine most of the developers, through TypeScript It changes the way developers using JavaScript. It follows that, JavaScript is now basically belongs to Microsoft.
In addition, there are concerns of many developers is: Why is not "Microsoft's acquisition of npm" it? It was mentioned that Microsoft developed a policy does not allow Microsoft + GitHub joint exposure. Microsoft wants to maintain the purity of GitHub's reputation and brand, rather than the GitHub and Microsoft confused.