[randunel]

> On March 18, 2016, Isaac Z. Schlueter, the chief executive officer of npm, Inc., wrote to both Kik Interactive and Koçulu, stating that the ownership of the kik package would be manually transferred to Kik Interactive. > After Koçulu expressed his disappointment with npm, Inc.'s decision and stated that he no longer wished to be part of the platform, Schlueter provided him with a command to delete all 273 modules that he had registered.[9] Koçulu executed the command on March 22, 2016, removing every package he had previously released

The author simply ran the script that NPM themselves told him to, and later NPM blamed the author for their own failings.

[skrebbel]

Ok fair! In that case I actually agree with his stance I think. I can understand how isaacs messed this up in what must've been a stressful situation, but it's hard to blame the author for it indeed, if he was just running the commands provided.

[coffeebeqn]

I mean if you’re the CEO of a package manager then you should probably have thought that one through a little bit more? Maybe ask one of the engineers what would happen?

[skrebbel]

Yeah indeed. Though I can appreciate the screwup. I mean, there was a heated thing going on, lawyers on one side and bad community PR on the other and NPM was caught in the middle. Couldnt backtrack on their maybe not so smart choice to give the "kik" package to Kik Messenger, and maybe hadn't thought through the consequences of encouraging the author to just delete all their packages. I disagree that that means they're "kids in suits" like some comments here suggest. It can just as well be an honest mistake made under pressure. People make mistakes sometimes! There's plenty precedence of mistakes by the NPM team but they also got a whole lot of stuff right!

But I do agree now that the author isn't really to blame.

[bsenftner]

"CEO of a package manager" sounds like a 15 year old, and from their behavior was just an old 15 year old.

[ben_w]

The older I get, the more I realise how many adults are just 15 year olds wearing suits to make themselves feel more grown up.