npm, Inc. and Scalenpm

We are frequently asked about the deliveries of swag that were promised to Scalenpm donors. Unfortunately, we have no part in those deliveries.

We realize that this is confusing. Here’s how this happened.

History

npm was created by Isaac Z. Schlueter in 2009.

IrisCouch was founded in 2010 by Jeff Jackson and Jason Smith, formerly of CouchOne. IrisCouch offered a CouchDB Platform-as-a-Service. Starting in 2010, IrisCouch offered Issac the opportunity to host the public npm registry on IrisCouch pro bono. IrisCouch hoped to generate visibility and community goodwill by hosting Isaac’s open source project. Isaac had no other affiliation with IrisCouch.

Nodejitsu was founded in 2010 by Charlie Robbins, Marak Squires, and Paolo Fragomeni. Their flagship product is a PaaS hosting service. Isaac Z. Schlueter and the npm project had no affiliation with Nodejitsu.

EDIT: Marak and Paolo had parted ways with Nodejitsu well prior to Scalenpm, and had no part in anything related to the crowd-funding drive. Our thanks to Marak Squires for pointing this out in the comments.

In May of 2013, IrisCouch was acquired by Nodejitsu. Nodejitsu continued to sponsor the hosting of the public npm registry. Just like IrisCouch, Nodejitsu hoped to generate visibility and community goodwill by hosting Isaac’s open source project.

Scalenpm

In November of 2013, Charlie Robbins proposed a fundraising drive to provide funds to help Nodejitsu cover the costs of providing free hosting to the npm registry project. The alternative was that Nodejitsu would stop providing hosting for free.

The Scalenpm drive was run by Nodejitsu. All of the sponsor data and funds were and are controlled by Nodejitsu exclusively.

Concerned that Nodejitsu may not be able to continue to provide free hosting services for the npm registry project, Isaac began to develop plans for a new company that would maintain the public npm registry service long-term, under his control.

Enter npm, Inc.

At the end of January 2014, Isaac founded npm, Inc. along with Rod Boothby and Laurie Voss, closing a 2.6MM round of funding led by True Ventures.

On February 4, npm, Inc. took over hosting of the npm registry. The public npm registry was moved from Nodejitsu to servers paid for by npm, Inc. Since then, there has been no affiliation between Nodejitsu and npm, Inc. Nodejitsu and npm, Inc. have no investors, founders, or employees in common. Nodejitsu and npm, Inc. are not partners. They have no relationship whatsoever. Nodejitsu plays no part in running the public npm registry, and does not maintain any of the official npm open source projects. None of the Scalenpm funds have ever been controlled, managed, or transferred to any agent of npm, Inc.

Nodejitsu has not provided access to the list of Scalenpm donors. (Yes, we have asked.)

In keeping with its founding objective, npm, Inc. continues to host the npm public registry and cover all associated costs of this free public service. npm, Inc. has worked hard to deliver 100% uptime of the registry over the last several months.

Although npm, Inc. is under no obligation to uphold promises made by another company, we would love to be able to thank the participants in Scalenpm for their support of the npm project.  While we cannot uphold every promise made by Nodejitsu, we would at least like to provide individual donors with the t-shirts, stickers, or hoodies that were promised them by Nodejitsu. If Nodejitsu is willing to provide us with a list of participants, we will send npm branded items.

Inquiries regarding Scalenpm may be sent to scalenpm@nodejitsu.com.