4 ms·

This combined with the cost of hosting (I remember the ruby community freaking out over rubygems costs a couple years ago) makes me think maybe we're evolving t

by rboyd 11y ago

This combined with the cost of hosting (I remember the ruby community freaking out over rubygems costs a couple years ago) makes me think maybe we're evolving towards decentralized dependency hosting. Something like Storj where users offset hosting fees with blockchain payments when dependencies are fetched.

krakensden 11y ago
The go solution seems more reasonable and achievable- the host is part of the namespace. Instant decentralization.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  There's nothing preventing decentralization with npm now; it's a matter of configuration. Tying the namespace to a host seems more like instant excessive coupling.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    Tying namespaces to a hostname isn't really that controversial -- it's no different than email. If you want to be your own provider then host your packages on your server(s) and tell your users to add npm.cooldev.me/packagename to their configuration. If you don't want to host your own then you can choose from a few public providers like npmjs but then have to be subject to their guidelines, policies, and fees. Throw in some automatic bittorrent support in the client to help offload costs and you've got something great.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      npm already supports all of that except the bittorrent bit, with the proper configuration, and without requiring that idiosyncratic namespace convention. [0] I don't think bittorrent is actually relevant to most use cases. Most people complaining here just don't want their site to go down, so they should vendor or fork all their deps and run their own registry to support that. Downstream users of public modules can either go through npmjs or perform the same vendoring and forking work themselves. [0] https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/registry https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/registry

4 ms·

This combined with the cost of hosting (I remember the ruby community freaking out over rubygems costs a couple years ago) makes me think maybe we're evolving t

by rboyd 11y ago

krakensden 11y ago
The go solution seems more reasonable and achievable- the host is part of the namespace. Instant decentralization.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  There's nothing preventing decentralization with npm now; it's a matter of configuration. Tying the namespace to a host seems more like instant excessive coupling.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    Tying namespaces to a hostname isn't really that controversial -- it's no different than email. If you want to be your own provider then host your packages on your server(s) and tell your users to add npm.cooldev.me/packagename to their configuration. If you don't want to host your own then you can choose from a few public providers like npmjs but then have to be subject to their guidelines, policies, and fees. Throw in some automatic bittorrent support in the client to help offload costs and you've got something great.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      npm already supports all of that except the bittorrent bit, with the proper configuration, and without requiring that idiosyncratic namespace convention. [0] I don't think bittorrent is actually relevant to most use cases. Most people complaining here just don't want their site to go down, so they should vendor or fork all their deps and run their own registry to support that. Downstream users of public modules can either go through npmjs or perform the same vendoring and forking work themselves. [0] https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/registry https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/registry