> Ruby seems to do this, Ruby uses https://rubygems.org https://rubygems.org as central repository for the gems (something like node's modules). You can howeve

> Ruby seems to do this, Ruby uses https://rubygems.org https://rubygems.org as central repository for the gems (something like node's modules). You can however host your own having only inspected software. However you know where the code is comming from and you can download it and inspect before installing. Idea (benefit) behind this is two-fold: easy way to have same library in multiple versions (you often need that) and having per-application isolated bundles of gems (again, it's easier to clean everything afterwards this way). Could all this be handled via system package manager? Sure, however it would be much more work for the developers (since gems generally work even on windows and other platforms; what package manager would you use on windows without `gem` command?). PS: I don't argue that there is room for improvement in some aspects, but the general idea isn't bad imo.