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by spdustin 3741 days ago
This feels very wrong to me. I know, open source, etc., and it's likely that the source license allows it provided the license remain intact, but still... For better or worse (worse, IMHO), the author decided to un-publish his nam modules. He asserted his authority over that package of his code. For npm to usurp his authority, even if the licensing allows it, feels wrong.
3 comments
peterkelly 3741 days ago
By choosing to publish his work as open source, he made it possible for npm to do this. One of the great things about open source licenses if that the original author decides to remove their work (regardless of whether on valid grounds or not), the community can still access it.

If he wanted the ability to prevent who is able to reuse and distributed his code, a proprietary license would have been a more suitable choice.

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swang 3741 days ago
Nope, nothing wrong. The code he wrote is his, but he doesn't own the npm namespace, which is all anyone cares about here at this point.

But you know what also _feels_ wrong? people who had no involvement in this at all having their day get fucked up because of this one dude who _suddenly_, just now realized that npm isn't going to really help him out and did the internet equivalent of taking your ball and going home.

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spdustin 3741 days ago
Agreed, that feels wrong too. But is npm supposed to be the recess supervisor in this metaphor, taking the ball back and giving it back to the other kids?
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alextgordon 3741 days ago
If he wants to control where people get his software, he should have published it under a proprietary license. Not saying he does, though.
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spdustin 3741 days ago
Fair enough. I would posit that he didn't ever expect that the npm folks would undo his actions, even if his decisions were/seemed rash.
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swang 3741 days ago
He doesn't care if anyone takes over the leftpad module.

He unpublished leftpad

Someone else republishes leftpad as a new owner

Since npm won't allow you to publish old versions, stuff is still broken since the depended on files have a hard dependency on v0.0.3

npm (the company) forces a republish on v0.0.3 or I guess an ununpublish.

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vacri 3741 days ago
The particular license chosen for this module doesn't put any limitations on the code - the 'do whatever the fuck you want' license is as permissive as it gets. If the author doesn't like that, he might want to choose a less permissive license next time around.
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