Now, here’s a happy story of two organizations coming together, Node.js and JavaScript!
It’s a great time to be alive! News about bomb mergers and acquisitions have been coming from all around with Microsoft buying GitHub and the latest news that IBM acquiring Red Hat. However, unlike those two acquisitions which were met with a fair amount of skepticism from the community, the intention for merger expressed by the foundations of Node.js and JavaScript was seen by the community as an exciting opportunity!
As seen in the poll results depicted above, the vast majority of the respondents appears to be quite enthusiastic about the news! And it’s amazing to see how these two communities are welcoming this potential merger with open arms!
I, for one, look forward to seeing what the future holds for the unified community of Node.js and JavaScript. For now, let’s take a step back and look at the discussion so far and the story that led to this move.
The story so far
On the 4th of October, Node.js Foundation and JS Foundation announced their intention to form a joint organization, a unified ecosystem that would support the broad Node.js and JavaScript communities.
The Node.js Foundation and JS Foundation boards have met several times already to discuss a potential alignment of the communities. The Foundation leaders and key technical stakeholders believe that a tighter alignment of communities will expand the scope of the current Foundations and enable greater support for Node.js and a broader range of JavaScript projects. We are very interested in hearing directly from the community and welcome all questions, ideas, and opinions so that the structure aligns with the expectations of the community. For this reason, no formal decisions regarding a merged Foundation and its potential organizational structure, governance policies, technical framework or leadership have been made at this point and will be formalized based on feedback from the community.
Mike Dolan, Vice President of Strategic Programs, the Linux Foundation.
As stated in the initial announcement, the goals for this merger include:
- Enhanced operational excellence;
- Streamlined member engagement;
- Increased collaboration across the JavaScript ecosystem and affiliated standards bodies;
- An “umbrella” project structure that brings stronger collaboration across all JavaScript projects; and
- A single, clear home available for any project in the JavaScript ecosystem.
But what does that mean for the community?
First things first, I think it would be a good idea to take a step back and have a look at the status of Node.js and JavaScript, in order to draw the bigger picture behind this initiative.
It is no secret or surprise that JavaScript is one of the most dominant programming languages with more than 10 million active users to date. Node.js, on the other hand, is constantly gaining momentum and becomes vital in the JavaScript ecosystem, as experts have discussed.
What’s more, according to the Node.js 2018 User Survey that was released earlier this year, JavaScript is the number one language Node.js users use, in addition to Node. No surprise there either, I guess!
But why is Node.js such an important part of the JavaScript ecosystem and what led to that merger? Of course, we cannot know the details of the discussion between the two foundations but there are some pretty obvious points we can have a look at.
SEE ALSO: The eternal battle continues – What is the fastest growing programming language in 2018?
Node.js is the platform that brings JavaScript outside the browser and, as some have argued, this is where JavaScript can show the most potential.
So is this something like the next evolutionary step of the JavaScript ecosystem? Such a merger can definitely be considered as the step towards unifying both the on and off browser JavaScript community, and it that sense it totally makes sense.
But what’s the impact on the day-to-day JavaScript and Node.js use?
The post Community welcomes potential Node.js and JavaScript unification with open arms appeared first on JAXenter.
Source : JAXenter
