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Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

blog.npmjs.org

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Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#11

Post by nawitus »

IbJacked wrote: post #7

I understand the fact that it can be fairly expensive to run a large, popular module site such as npm and rubygems. What I'm curious about is how they intend to monetize npm, and how it affect users, if it does. Typically, VCs hope to get a return on their investment.

>The future is large, but I can pretty much guarantee that paying for access to open source modules is not ever going to happen. Not because it's evil (though, I believe is), but because it's stupid. It's just not a good model, and it's not hard to see why. No one wants to pay it, and rather than deliver value, you're making people go elsewhere. It is a case of the orchard selling lumber, burning down your value in order to get a short-term gain that can never expand.

>Many companies have been literally begging for me to figure out a way to take their money and add some features to npm. None of this impacts what any of you are currently doing, and in fact, it helps you, because it requires building additional high-availability systems that are robust enough for the next 10x increase we face.

>Like I said, all that is currently free will remain free, and all that is currently flaky will improve. There'll be some new stuff you can pay for if you want to use it, but if you're happy with the current status quo, you can just take it easy and maybe eventually get a job where you use npm for work stuff also :) - Isaac Schlueter

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/npm-/pkMs24w7a4Q

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#12

Post by couradical »

IbJacked wrote: post #7

I understand the fact that it can be fairly expensive to run a large, popular module site such as npm and rubygems. What I'm curious about is how they intend to monetize npm, and how it affect users, if it does. Typically, VCs hope to get a return on their investment.

Take a look at Nagios - What if they offer a packaging solution, or a Red-Hat style certification of packages, possibly support?

You can run Nagios/RHEL for free, but support/custom built/easy drop and go is where you get into serious money.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#13

Post by andyzweb »

yapcguy wrote: post #9
phillmv wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the exit going to be? Who are they going to sell to? What revenues are they going to bring in? We're talking VC money, not a grant. Did they just hand over the keys to the node community to someone else?

Money corrupts. It's amazing how things have changed in 10 years. CPAN. Perl. A real community of programmers, system admins, enthusiasts.

your sentiment is insufficiently appreciated sadly.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#14

Post by al2o3cr »

One thing I'm a tad annoyed by - this deal was being put together simultaneously with the "scalenpm" crowdfunding drive. A shoutout to the supporters of that drive would have been nice...

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#15

Post by neovive »

IbJacked wrote: post #7

I understand the fact that it can be fairly expensive to run a large, popular module site such as npm and rubygems. What I'm curious about is how they intend to monetize npm, and how it affect users, if it does. Typically, VCs hope to get a return on their investment.

Enterprise offerings (support levels, private repositories, etc.) seem to be the most obvious. I could see many companies being interesting in an npm-style infrastructure for their non-OSS modules. Overall, this is interesting and will set a precedent going forward.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#16

Post by mmaster5 »

Per his blog, Fast.ly is now hosting the npm registry, so the money is not going for hosting. It's to build some kind of sellout business.

Back in July he must've seen this coming because he switched the npm license from MIT to the more restrictive Artistic 2.0: https://github.com/npm/npm/commit/c32391b1efd70a861cebc77e0c...

He's already taken away the download numbers on npmjs.org, so maybe he intends to sell the "analytics" back to the community.

The guy calls himself a Supreme Emporer on his LinkedIn.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#17

Post by williamcotton »

Privately run 'open source' code repositories are not what the open web should run on.

I would say that this marks the beginning of the end for npm as anything viable for front-end code repositories and probably for anything related to node.

I propose an open-source alternative for front-end JavaScript libraries and dependency management.

Anyone calling for npm modules and browserify to rule the day for front-end JS should question their opinions on the matter.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#18

Post by btd »

IbJacked wrote: post #7

I understand the fact that it can be fairly expensive to run a large, popular module site such as npm and rubygems. What I'm curious about is how they intend to monetize npm, and how it affect users, if it does. Typically, VCs hope to get a return on their investment.

It is how Sonatype Nexus live.

Re: Npm Raises $2.6M Seed Round

#20

Post by sheetjs »

IbJacked wrote: post #7

I understand the fact that it can be fairly expensive to run a large, popular module site such as npm and rubygems. What I'm curious about is how they intend to monetize npm, and how it affect users, if it does. Typically, VCs hope to get a return on their investment.

There are 3 obvious areas of monetization:

- paid private repositories on npm or a parallel system (think github)

- paid internal npm servers with support (think github enterprise)

- statistics that used to be available, like download counts (think imgur pro)

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