I have seen some chatter on Twitter, GitHub and other places talking about the recent change of the Node.js project express moving from visionmedia to strongloop in GitHub and I wanted to share my point of view.
Couple points up-front:
- I have nothing against StrongLoop, Inc. (the Delaware corporation) and I'm sure they are very talented and motivated.
- I have nothing against TJ and actually think it's really awesome that he got something for a lot of the work he has put into express and related projects over the years.
- I have not, nor wish to, receive any money around express.
So, from my side there are a few things. Yes, TJ emailed me regarding StrongLoop sponsoring expressjs.com and writing documentation and tutorials and I welcomed such a sponsorship. There was probably some mis-communication in this regard, as I had interpreted it as we would plaster their Logo on the site and/or repo README in a "Sponsors" or such section in return for some awesome documentation, tutorials, etc.
I was not aware the repositories on GitHub would be moving anywhere, though. If I did, I would of at least done some prep to change links, fix badges, Travis CI setup, Coveralls.io setup, etc. but since StrongLoop did not ask the "Lead Maintainer" anything prior to the move, some basic repository-moving maintenance was of course not even done.
As for why I have not been participating in express since the change, I can simply say that StrongLoop has left me feeling taken advantage of. As far as I can tell, there was some kind of implicit expectation that I would just carry on my merry way with express no matter where it went, for free, of course. I didn't even get a "Hey, Doug, so we bought express from TJ and love what you are doing with the project and would like you to continue to lead and maintain it. How can we make this work?"
I take a lot of time out of my life to not just add commits to express and
friends (that's not much time), but to answer completely every single issue
and PR that is opened on GitHub and try to work with the folks to resolve their
issue. I even idle on #express and answer questions. It's a huge time-sink
that I do, and it does not seem like StrongLoop as a new owner wants to put
any resources of their own into doing this and would rather the community to
just continue to do this on it's own for nothing.
I have not seen anyone from StrongLoop trying to support anything through the issue tracker before the change, still have not seen anyone from StrongLoop helping out in the IRC channel nor the Google Groups mailing list. I would hope that a for-profit company would support something it "owns", as it is gaining value from the project. I'm sure they help people who have questions about their paid products.
@RaymontFeng Thanks for pointing that out. I apparently missed that in the issues thread.
My other points still stand: the community has yet to see a clear path from Strongloop on this, and by contrast, it's pretty clear what the contributors/community want. Express belongs in the /expressjs org. If you want to sponsor development on the project, then do it. If Express will remain a community driven project, listen to the contributors, and put action behind your words.