Microsoft's Github today announced the acquisition of npm, the company behind the Node package manager, npm Registry, and npm CLI.
npm is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. As of today, npm provides 1.3 million software packages to approximately 12 million developers who download these packages 75 billion times a month.
Excited to announce that @npmjs will be joining GitHub, and honored to have the chance to serve the millions of JavaScript developers who rely on npm!https://t.co/YS34mkI6yR pic.twitter.com/BLy83zWVbt
— Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) March 16, 2020
Microsoft says npm helps JavaScript become the world's largest developer ecosystem.
Microsoft GitHub has now guaranteed that npm will always be free. After the acquisition, GitHub's focus will be on the following:
Invest in registered infrastructure and platforms. The JavaScript ecosystem is large and growing rapidly. After the acquisition is completed, the company will make the necessary investments to ensure that NPM is fast, reliable, and scalable.
Enhance the core experience. The company is committed to improving the daily experience of developers and maintainers, supporting work already started on the npm v7 CLI, and will remain free and open source.
Communicate with the community. The company will actively participate in the JavaScript community to get developers' ideas and use their power to help define the future of npm.
Microsoft also plans to integrate GitHub and npm to improve the security of the open source software supply chain. Microsoft plans to have npm paying customers migrate their private npm packages to GitHub Packages later this year.
Therefore, npm will be dedicated to becoming a large public registry for JavaScript.
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