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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

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/c32391b1efd70a861cebc77e0cc784a46af5de21 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.

deleted 13y ago
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seldo 13y ago
It's not accurate to say that Fastly is hosting the registry; Fastly are providing CDN services to our registry -- a globally distributed cache -- for which we're very grateful. As of five days ago ( http://blog.npmjs.org/post/75707294465/new-npm-registry-architecture http://blog.npmjs.org/post/75707294465/new-npm-registry-arch... ) we are hosting the registry ourselves; it was previously hosted by Nodejitsu (who still operate a downstream mirror). As for the download counts, per Twitter ( https://twitter.com/npmjs/status/422823647619710976 https://twitter.com/npmjs/status/422823647619710976 ), we removed the download counts because our original solution for those counts (keeping them in CouchDB) wasn't scaling. I am literally, as we speak, working on the replacement system to restore download counts. And Isaac's LinkedIn title is a joke. I hope that's obvious.
- ivanplenty 13y ago
  thanks for answering the questions. i depend on node at my day job, so i am particularly interested in npm's future. i understand someone has to pay for the servers and development time, but would it be possible to give a hint for the types of things you plan to charge for? Even just a rough sketch of "we will offer private repositories" or "we will offer support." I appreciate the "reassurances" that nothing will change today for me, but the ambiguity prevents my latent paranoia from going away.
  - seldo 13y ago
    I appreciate your paranoia :-) We are wary of announcing all the stuff we're planning given that we don't know how long it will take to build yet and don't want to be accused of vaporware. However, we are planning to announce at least our initial product plans pretty soon. (Probably not in a comment on a HN thread though ;-))
    - morganherlocker 13y ago
      I just want to say that I would gladly pay for private npm hosting. Something along the lines of github's private vs public repos would be extremely valuable. Yes, we could set up our own private npm server, but this seems like an obvious thing to outsource to a service as long as the pricing is not crazy. Best of luck!
      - jameswyse 13y ago
        We've been using Gemfury[1] for our private modules which has worked out well, no problems in over a year of use.. though I'd probably switch over to npm if they offered private hosting. [1] http://www.gemfury.com/ http://www.gemfury.com/
      - wprl 13y ago
        FYI Nodejitsu offers private npm...
- orenmazor 13y ago
  Thanks for clearing it up. I knew there are technical/logical answers to all of the points people are bringing up.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- etler 13y ago
  It's silly how angry people can get over nothing.
- PyDart 13y ago
  (Pssst... hey kid... c'mere a minute. Tell ya somethin'. Ya wanna sell stuff? Then stfu about yer junk. Cuz... <tch> seriously? NO body wants to hear that shit. Know whutta mean? Jus' sayin'...) And, I hate to tell ya this, but... <ahem>... that guy's title... if it is, as you say, "a joke"... it sure ain't the biggest one. But, ya don't have to take MY word for it. Life is a great educator. Bit heavy-handed at times, but... you guys'll find that out. Have at it, kid. Take yer best shot. Hope ya got a 'Plan B'.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

seldo 13y ago

It's not accurate to say that Fastly is hosting the registry; Fastly are providing CDN services to our registry -- a globally distributed cache -- for which we're very grateful. As of five days ago ( http://blog.npmjs.org/post/75707294465/new-npm-registry-architecture http://blog.npmjs.org/post/75707294465/new-npm-registry-arch... ) we are hosting the registry ourselves; it was previously hosted by Nodejitsu (who still operate a downstream mirror). As for the download counts, per Twitter ( https://twitter.com/npmjs/status/422823647619710976 https://twitter.com/npmjs/status/422823647619710976 ), we removed the download counts because our original solution for those counts (keeping them in CouchDB) wasn't scaling. I am literally, as we speak, working on the replacement system to restore download counts. And Isaac's LinkedIn title is a joke. I hope that's obvious.

ivanplenty 13y ago
thanks for answering the questions. i depend on node at my day job, so i am particularly interested in npm's future. i understand someone has to pay for the servers and development time, but would it be possible to give a hint for the types of things you plan to charge for? Even just a rough sketch of "we will offer private repositories" or "we will offer support." I appreciate the "reassurances" that nothing will change today for me, but the ambiguity prevents my latent paranoia from going away.
- seldo 13y ago
  I appreciate your paranoia :-) We are wary of announcing all the stuff we're planning given that we don't know how long it will take to build yet and don't want to be accused of vaporware. However, we are planning to announce at least our initial product plans pretty soon. (Probably not in a comment on a HN thread though ;-))
  - morganherlocker 13y ago
    I just want to say that I would gladly pay for private npm hosting. Something along the lines of github's private vs public repos would be extremely valuable. Yes, we could set up our own private npm server, but this seems like an obvious thing to outsource to a service as long as the pricing is not crazy. Best of luck!
    - jameswyse 13y ago
      We've been using Gemfury[1] for our private modules which has worked out well, no problems in over a year of use.. though I'd probably switch over to npm if they offered private hosting. [1] http://www.gemfury.com/ http://www.gemfury.com/
    - wprl 13y ago
      FYI Nodejitsu offers private npm...
orenmazor 13y ago
Thanks for clearing it up. I knew there are technical/logical answers to all of the points people are bringing up.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
etler 13y ago
It's silly how angry people can get over nothing.
PyDart 13y ago
(Pssst... hey kid... c'mere a minute. Tell ya somethin'. Ya wanna sell stuff? Then stfu about yer junk. Cuz... <tch> seriously? NO body wants to hear that shit. Know whutta mean? Jus' sayin'...) And, I hate to tell ya this, but... <ahem>... that guy's title... if it is, as you say, "a joke"... it sure ain't the biggest one. But, ya don't have to take MY word for it. Life is a great educator. Bit heavy-handed at times, but... you guys'll find that out. Have at it, kid. Take yer best shot. Hope ya got a 'Plan B'.