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NPM Is Joining GitHub

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Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#381

Post by Dahoon »

dlivingston wrote: post #217
impatient_bacon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari.

Care to explain? Safari has one of the highest standards compliance of any modern browser [0], which IE famously did not. It has been argued with various success [1] that Chrome is the new I.E., due to "Chrome exclusive" web standards. [0]: https://html5test.com/compare/browser/safari-11.2/chrome-30/... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16070595

Want to try something fun? Install any browser in iOS and do a test. Then do the same test with Safari. Now ponder why they are exactly the same no matter which browser you install.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#382

Post by quixoticaxolotl »

K0nserv wrote: post #185
sneak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not consider the largest distributor of proprietary, closed-source spyware (Windows) owning the fastest growing open source package manager to be a good outcome, personally.

It depends on what the alternative is. When NPM starts running out of money to run the service what would happen? More VC, but only to a point and the firms would be increasingly be influencing NPM to make money by any means(probably not good for anyone but the firms). Alternatively a cash strapped NPM fails to invest in security and availability of the service leading to widespread outages or worse a large scale sup…

Change my mind: package management infrastructure run by government as a public service should be the ideal end outcome for everyone.

Why I think this: private or volunteer models are unsustainable in the long run owing to funding uncertainties or conflicts of interest between stakeholders. Utilities that support the bulk of our technical infrastructure should be secured by public interests. Governments can keep things free.

Common objections:

- "Governments are inefficient". Depends on the area. The government tends to be inefficient in handling areas with direct consumer benefit, but less so in dealing with consortiums or private entities. Since private entities are the primary mainstream users of packages, I don't think government will be too slow on this front.

- "Governments will be malicious". This I don't doubt, but the solution for that is building better trust mechanisms rather than keeping a practical solution at bay, and for software at least such trust mechanisms are tenable e.g. see the CNCF's Falcon project.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#383

Post by eyelidlessness »

allover wrote: post #369
mbesto wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tbf Microsoft have won back a lot of good faith with developers due to projects like VS Code and TypeScript, even for those of us who remember their past. Those are great until they're not. It's why it's called "bait and switch". > And we're yet to hear of any negative impact of their Github acquisition (afaik - correct me if wrong). ANY ?! Heh, do a quick search just on HN and you'll find it pretty quickly.

I know what 'bait and switch' means, just like I also know what FUD means. Next you'll call them Micro$oft. Come on now.

Oh this takes me back to when Internet Exploder was the most popular browser

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#384

Post by teknopaul »

nine_k wrote: post #373
mulmen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sad to read. Why does every project have to be profitable? If NPM is useful users (companies and people) can invest time or cash to support the operations and continued development. This foundation model has been successful across open source and prevents one company from changing the direction of a project to fit their own needs at the expense of everyone else. I think this was critical to the continued grow…

Profitable of not, they should not run out of money. Would yo prefer npm infrastructure to be maintained and developed by the lowest-paid programmers they could hire?

Imhi Npm is two things a cli tool, and a central repo that tries to be the one and only js repo: to make money from that position. Their infra costs them money only because that was their angle for selling out.

Linux repos take the alternative approach to try to get as many mirrors as possible so it can remain free.

Microsoft did not buy npm to help it become free. Believe. They bought it because they rekon they can make buck out of it.

That buck comes from somewhere.

Nodejs going to the Linux foundation was good news.

Microsoft buying Npm is bad news.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#385

Post by Dahoon »

chang1 wrote: post #212
reaperducer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised there's not a single mention of "Microsoft" in this or the npm announcement [1], given the old-evil-history of Microsoft and the new-nice Microsoft we have today. Maybe Microsoft's reputation is exactly the reason why it was left out of this announcement. Sometimes a brand is so tarnished that the owner tries to hide it from the people who hate it. (For example, Comcast → Xfinity. I expect Monsanto to g…

The latter already happened[1]. Bayer offloaded most of it's ag business (to BASF) and replaced it with Monsanto. Monsanto has been rebranded "Bayer Crop Science". Although I'm guessing much for the same reason, Monsanto never rebranded any of the dozens of seed companies it acquired over the years (e.g. Dekalb, Seminis, Asgrow, etc.) The same also goes for Charter → Spectrum. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsan…

>Monsanto has been rebranded "Bayer Crop Science"

When the company that commercialized heroin and was complicit in the holocaust is a better brand you really got a PR problem.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#386

Post by manigandham »

Dahoon wrote: post #379
manigandham wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a subjective political opinion of a far-left vocal minority. Not everyone has an issue with ICE (a federal law-enforcement agency that stops criminals and saves lives) nor finds a problem with a company legally providing services to the government.

>That's a subjective political opinion of a far-left vocal minority What you are talking about is Right-wing politics, even if they are extremely far to the left of your -and the majority of peoples political view -in the USA. Both parties in the US are on the right. This isn't Reddit where the state of US politics is the default norm when it differs from most of planet earth. Though HN is quickly getting there.

Open/loose borders is far left policy everywhere. Most countries are far stricter with borders than the US.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#387

Post by manigandham »

judge2020 wrote: post #358
manigandham wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Microsoft's dev strategy? .NET continues to be the most powerful and productive platform that I've used. .NET Core was a great move and it's all coming together nicely now, and even creating innovations like Blazor.

I think the poster was saying that .NET has a dev strategy, but other projects don't. > Microsoft can’t even put coherent dev strategy outside of .NET on Azure

You don't need Azure to use any part of .NET - and VSCode, Github, etc., stretch beyond both.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#388

Post by mbesto »

allover wrote: post #369
mbesto wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tbf Microsoft have won back a lot of good faith with developers due to projects like VS Code and TypeScript, even for those of us who remember their past. Those are great until they're not. It's why it's called "bait and switch". > And we're yet to hear of any negative impact of their Github acquisition (afaik - correct me if wrong). ANY ?! Heh, do a quick search just on HN and you'll find it pretty quickly.

I know what 'bait and switch' means, just like I also know what FUD means. Next you'll call them Micro$oft. Come on now.

Are you aware of what Oracle is doing to its customers right now?

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#389

Post by teknopaul »

wongarsu wrote: post #255
K0nserv wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what the alternative is. When NPM starts running out of money to run the service what would happen? More VC, but only to a point and the firms would be increasingly be influencing NPM to make money by any means(probably not good for anyone but the firms). Alternatively a cash strapped NPM fails to invest in security and availability of the service leading to widespread outages or worse a large scale sup…

Why would NPM run out of money? NPM is the primary vendor for worry-free distribution and management of private JavaScript packages for $7/month/user. In a time where bandwidth is basically free (outside AWS/Azure/GCP) that should surely pay for server costs and a handful of developers. It probably isn't going to 20x VC money, but it sounds like it would be profitable to run as a business.

Agreed. It was profitable before, (no indication they sold at a loss), it will probably be profitable after for MS.

"2fa" sounds bad. That is clearly marketing bs for linking your npm account to a MS account with more personal info attached.

Ease of publishing will be the first thing to go.

Then the fun will disappear with MS as owner, like when Oracle bought Java.

Happy to be a rustacean.

Re: NPM Is Joining GitHub

#390

Post by yawaramin »

ivanbakel wrote: post #361
greggman3 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confused why you think a service servings millions or billions of requests a day wouldn't require money to run. Do you think some grant magically appear out of thin air to pay for the servers, storage, bandwidth, and maintenance?

Big leap from "servers cost money" to "a package manager requires a commercial entity". How are other language ecosystems and package managers operating, many without private companies attached, when they too are serving millions of requests a day?

Well the big ones are hosted by commercial enterprises, and the smaller ones don't have the scale of JavaScript so they don't require that level of support.
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