Share

Last week was the 8th edition Node.js (now OpenJS) Collaborator Summit, the place where active contributors to the Node.js project and people from the community meet.

In the 2 full days of sessions, key initiatives for the present and future of Node.js were discussed and presented, including:

• Modules
• Fetch in Node.js
• Release Working Group
• Website RedesignWorkers
• Package Maintenance streams

Additionally, multiple sessions of “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) allowed people could ask the core contributors to Node.js any relevant questions about a specific topic or project. And of course, the “hallway track” was lively as well.

Quoting Jeremiah Senkpiel, Engineer at NodeSource and TSC member:

“The collab summit was another great opportunity for Node.js core developers to discuss major initiatives in Node.js face-to-face with each other. Almost every significant topic discussed provided at least some actionable conclusions, with topics such as Promises, Streams, Deprecations, CLI tooling, and many more being productive. I think there will be a lot of good development to look forward to during the next 6 months.”

It was the first Summit with the OpenJS Foundation, and in general, there was a positive experience meeting new people, connecting with folks, getting familiar with the projects and understanding what should be the next steps for having a bigger impact in the community.

Anna Henningsen, Node.js Core maintainer actively working on workers said:

“The summit was basically about what I expected, with lots of discussions and not too many presentations. My personal big takeaways are that we may be looking into doing telemetry for Node.js itself in some situations (e.g. when running in CI environments) to help us figure out e.g. how to deprecate items, and having a defined path for moving Workers out of experimental to stable status.”

On the first day of the summit, Anna and Ruben Bridgewater talked about Deprecations Future and the second day, she talked about Workers with Benjamin Grundy.

Quoting Tracy Hinds, Director of the Community Committee of the Node.js Foundation and OpenJS Foundation:

“We still have a lot of work to do getting everyone in the projects on a solid footing with our new Cross-Project Council (CPC) and what incredible opportunities we have by our powers combined. But from my side, we must take care to not charge aimlessly forward without a lot of thought, care, and intention because it is much more difficult to fix things moving forward than learn from the prior iterations of our foundations and build anew right now. Classic 'on the shoulder of giants' scenario here.

Thanks to conference organizing and speaking, I have met a lot of JS folks over the years, and it was an incredibly kind, smart and new group in addition to my old faves that are helping give me a fresh perspective into our path ahead (and it's very easy to get jaded in open source).”

In my personal opinion, the Node.js community and the new OpenJS Foundation are doing a great job moving forward the projects and community. There are multiple initiatives to ensure the sustainability and future of the Node.js runtime, and also the inclusion of people from different backgrounds. The Summit was welcoming, friendly, very informative, and the best space to find out what’s going on in the OpenJS Foundation, Cross-Project Council, and Node.js project.

It's important to keep in mind and recognize the job of all the people that have helped Node.js to become the fastest growing project on earth, in just 10 years, it has reached 1 billion downloads, 1 million npm packages, and it's used by every Fortune 500 company on Earth. This wouldn't be possible without the passion and work of hundreds of people, contributions of thousands, and the organization of events like this, where people can share their knowledge, share with each other, and plan for the next 10 years.

Special thanks to Anna, Tracy, and Jeremiah for your insights.