Left-Pad (2024)
a year ago
- #npm
- #left-pad
- #open-source
- The left-pad incident occurred 8 years ago, a notable event mentioned in books.
- Decision to unpublish was made during self-reflection in nature, guided by the heart, not logic, anger, or greed.
- Principle: If NPM breaks its own rules to remove one package, they should remove all.
- Context involved Kik Messenger posturing and threatening the open source community, leading NPM to act against their own rules.
- NPM was afraid of losing Kik, not the author afraid of Kik's threats.
- Misunderstood narrative: Not an angry protest but standing ground under pressure.
- NPM had time to adjust APIs but chose to provide a script to remove all packages at once, showing condescension towards developers.
- Author's 350+ Unix philosophy packages seemed unused due to lack of stats, but impact was unknown.
- After left-pad, the author quit their job, left the US, traveled, and shifted passion from open-source to business and marketing.
- Left-pad was a 'death' and 're-birth' moment, leading to new passions while life moves on.