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Hey everyone, My name is Thomas, one of the original founders of cdnjs along with Ryan (linked below by another commenter). We originally posted cdnjs on Hack

Hey everyone, My name is Thomas, one of the original founders of cdnjs along with Ryan (linked below by another commenter). We originally posted cdnjs on Hacker News in 2011 -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828516 The project was originally created on AWS Cloudfront, Ryan and I thought we could handle the bills. In retrospect that was incredibly naive so we were fortunate to partner with Cloudflare. At the time, cdnjs was a baby, Cloudflare had just started entering the market. In short, Cloudflare always owned the domain, cdnjs.cloudflare.com, meaning, we were constrained to work under the DNS level. We have both put considerable amounts of work into the project, but nothing compared to the community and the "core" contributors. I put "core" into quotes because for the last 5 years, cdnjs has largely been run by a highly dedicated man named Peter. https://github.com/PeterDaveHello https://github.com/PeterDaveHello Peter built enormous amounts of infrastructure to support cdnjs. He is extremely diligent, intelligent and determined. The project was Ryan's and I "baby" but we were happy to relinquish control, sorry for all the "buts", but we were not in a position to control due to the technical and commercial reasons. Ryan and I have never personally profited off the project, we've only paid bills and late night ssh sessions. Conversations are underway to move forward, it is likely that the project will move to an unpkg setup (assets are just mirrored to npm). A lot to say, but I'm at a lack of words. Happy to answer any and all questions.

suresh70 7y ago
Do you guys have any plans for short term relief to clear out the pending PRs and keep the show running?.
- MattIPv4 7y ago
  Nothing that I've heard so far - though I'm happy to be corrected by Thomas or Ryan.
MattIPv4 7y ago
It'd be lovely to hear this internally. Peter & I have been trying for the last many months to gain more access and control so we can keep it going. Alas, that didn't happen, so Peter stepped down and is no longer maintaining cdnjs. I'm still here to try and keep it alive, but hearing nothing internally makes that rather hard :(
bhouston 7y ago
Why is the CDN Github account locked down so much that even the longest time collaborators do not have proper access? They are the ones doing the majority of the work? We should probably rename this old repo ThomasCDN.js and fork this repo to a new CDN.js so that the ones doing the work can resume activity. You guys are currently the weakest link and not contributing, instead just hurting the project while not communicating. Is there an internal fight about power right now? Is there some type of investment happening that you need to ensure you have control? I suspect this is turning into an enterprise business, thus the big push for consolidating control and secrecy. If that can not work, or there is a big business push that the community doesn't need or want, the maintainers should make a new one in partnership with Cloudflare with a slight name change to avoid issues. https://opencdn.cloudflare.com https://opencdn.cloudflare.com would be a good name.
root_axis 7y ago
unpkg.com has been a repeated problem for us in production, I'd definitely avoid it. https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176 https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176
OldFatCactus 7y ago
still waiting on an answer as to why you felt the need lock the project down so that people actually contributing to it couldn't continue to do so. Seems like very poor stewardship of FOSS projects on your part.

suresh70 7y ago

Do you guys have any plans for short term relief to clear out the pending PRs and keep the show running?.

MattIPv4 7y ago
Nothing that I've heard so far - though I'm happy to be corrected by Thomas or Ryan.

MattIPv4 7y ago

It'd be lovely to hear this internally. Peter & I have been trying for the last many months to gain more access and control so we can keep it going. Alas, that didn't happen, so Peter stepped down and is no longer maintaining cdnjs. I'm still here to try and keep it alive, but hearing nothing internally makes that rather hard :(

bhouston 7y ago

Why is the CDN Github account locked down so much that even the longest time collaborators do not have proper access? They are the ones doing the majority of the work? We should probably rename this old repo ThomasCDN.js and fork this repo to a new CDN.js so that the ones doing the work can resume activity. You guys are currently the weakest link and not contributing, instead just hurting the project while not communicating. Is there an internal fight about power right now? Is there some type of investment happening that you need to ensure you have control? I suspect this is turning into an enterprise business, thus the big push for consolidating control and secrecy. If that can not work, or there is a big business push that the community doesn't need or want, the maintainers should make a new one in partnership with Cloudflare with a slight name change to avoid issues. https://opencdn.cloudflare.com https://opencdn.cloudflare.com would be a good name.

root_axis 7y ago

unpkg.com has been a repeated problem for us in production, I'd definitely avoid it. https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176 https://github.com/mjackson/unpkg/issues/176

OldFatCactus 7y ago

still waiting on an answer as to why you felt the need lock the project down so that people actually contributing to it couldn't continue to do so. Seems like very poor stewardship of FOSS projects on your part.