Response to comments by Issac Roth of StrongLoop

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This is rather out of date and we've all moved past it. Me and Issac are cool now.

+1 to @voodootikigod commencing the node singularity.

@mikeal Well, don't have to worry about my commits getting too "academic". That'd be pretty hard to do since I didn't even make it though the system. :P

But seriously, complexity and abstraction bother me. Probably because I'm dumb and it just confuses me. I'm hoping in v0.13 development we can build out a lower level API, like what I did with smalloc and what I'm currently doing with asyncListener, so no one feels the need to take Node in "another direction". Instead they'll have enough flexibility to create whatever crazy complex and abstract user-land modules they want. Allowing me to just make all the things faster.

My vendetta against all those who have said "Node isn't as fast as X" is still going strong, and I will win!

The fact that the message isn't just "we're a company that sponsors people that work on Node.js" and rather has superlatives like "biggest" and "most" makes me very uncomfortable. We are riding a movement that was started by Linus and Stallman and at no point should there be a bottom line lest they chase after us for royalties.

Why does there need to be a competition? Why even bring up Joyent? Is there not enough work to go around?

What promises were made to raise a 8M seed round? What are they going to profitize?

VC + open source contributions leaves me with a bad taste. The motives are no longer about altruism and contributing to a flourishing community. I don't like where this is headed, but I think the community will adjust appropriately (I hope).

As a member of @thenodefirm I receive emails daily from large cap multinational corporations, startups and indie developers all proclaiming their adoption or serious interest in Node. This is happening at a breakneck and unprecedented pace.

The value behind Node as a technology solution is not hype. The value of Node as recruiting differentiator is not understated. The ability to unlock creative potential in technologists with Node is real (see Arduino, Nodebots, Raspberry Pi, LG TVs, etc.).

As this rapid adoption and explosion of innovation happen at the same time it makes sense that companies will form and attempt to either profit, contribute or do both. This is actually healthy for the long term sustainability of the project, for the more businesses that are created around Node to support companies using Node, fuels the ecosystem(s) of technologists writing Node apps.

The inflection point happens, IMO, with the community at large. We have an immense amount of responsibility as good stewards of the community to continue to allow creative potential to be unlocked while simultaneously building and allowing to be built, sustainable and profitable businesses. It's a positive feedback loop.

This is paramount to our mission at The Node Firm and we are convinced that this model works, or is at least working, and we hope that more companies share in our vision. Community first.

@joemccann when we started The Node Firm what we always said of the mission was "to help companies be successful with node.js" and I think that still holds true. The Firm has never moved to own parts of the community or even to dictate them but always to gather the expertise necessary to help companies that lack the experience with node.js they need to succeed.

@mikeal agreed and the business has evolved and grown, we still share those core values as ultimately a means to an end to support the community at large. As more enterprises adopt Node, there are more jobs for Node developers. All boats rise.

@mikeal I think we're saying the same thing. =)

@joemccann we are definitely agreeing :) the mission is the same but the needs people have in order to be successful with node have changed over time and so the firm's offerings have needed to evolve. While I haven't had the time to be actively involved I have appreciated that evolution.

i hope @bnoordhuis and @piscisaureus are successful with what ever they do, they deserve it!

as long as there is an accessible git-repository with a cool LICENSE in it, everything is fine :D

My response is here: https://gist.github.com/piscisaureus/6707356

@mikeal I think of our relationship to node being rather close to Voxer.

We build a product (our mBaaS) that is completely tied to node. We're trying to sell this to big companies that are going to be pushing a lot of data. If node is performing badly, or we get irregular behavior, we need to be able to understand why, and fix it quickly. Employing Ben and Bert, who understand the internals of libuv and node very intimately, makes that possible. If node is performing poorly, a product on top of it is going to be a hard sell.

Let me stress that we are NOT trying to sell node. We are trying to sell our mBaaS, which happens to use node because we found it to be most suitable for the needs of the product. We are taking one particular common use-case of node, and trying to make it easier to build, monitor, and scale.

As for the "corporate sponsorship" statement, you're probably interpreting that a bit differently from how it really is in our case. We are not paid to sit around and make random stuff in node. We all have a whole pile of tasks that are critical to making our product competitive. Sometimes those tasks happen to be improving libuv or node itself to handle the capacity a customer requires.

@Qard sure, but the comments made by Roth don't echo the tone, content, or motivation your statements here have. I'm sure that we could talk this all out and come to an agreement but it wouldn't change the statements your CEO is making in public to the press.

@Qard Certainly the (frequently edited) StrongLoop website often contains somewhat misleading text, like:

(grabbed at Thu Sep 26 02:56:37 UTC 2013 from http://strongloop.com/node-republic/)

@nomdeveloper fixed

@mikeal @nomdeveloper I'm just a dev, so I don't have much say in the PR and wording of things. I agree that some of what has been said might smell a bit of corporate positioning, but we definitely are good intentioned. We're just a new startup, trying to get attention. Apparently it's working, albeit not in quite the way we intended.

When node started to get attention from big companies, Joyent would just bring Ryan into meetings with customers, sit him down, and say "we have that guy". We're basically doing the same thing with Bert and Ben. Perhaps that's a bit arrogant, but it's also true. Members of our team have made significant contributions to node. There's no denying that.

I'll be in SF this weekend mentoring at Startup Weekend, if you have any desire to speak in person. Feel free to reply here or DM me on twitter @stephenbelanger. Isaac will also be around, not sure what his schedule is though.

@mikeal Hi this is IssacR the person you're complaining about. :)

We could both be more precise in our commentary but I get the sense we both really care. Sorry for any harm done. I am adjusting and learning. Let's get together and talk it out. I live in SF so should be easy. I'll hit you on email.