Last year in October, the Node.js and JS Foundations announced their intent to create a joint organization. After six months of analyzing community feedback, deliberation, and collaboration, the two foundations finally merged into the OpenJS Foundation on Tuesday.
@Nodejs and @the_jsf have merged to form the #OpenJSFoundation! The OpenJS Foundation is to become the central place to support collaborative development of #JavaScript and web technologies. Read more here https://t.co/FV3IXALaeB pic.twitter.com/ORfC2RlsWQ
— Node.js (@nodejs) March 12, 2019
Dave Methvin, Technical Advisory Committee Chair, JS Foundation, explaining the motivation behind this merger said in the announcement, “This is an exciting step forward for the entire open source JavaScript community, as it strengthens the impact of our collective efforts under one united Foundation. A new merged Foundation is able to better serve the community and members to grow the JavaScript ecosystem from a technology and standards perspective.”
The OpenJS Foundation is backed by 30 corporate and end-user members including Google, Microsoft, IBM, PayPal, and GoDaddy. It currently hosts a wide range of projects including Appium, Dojo, jQuery, Node.js, webpack, and many more.
Goals of the OpenJS Foundation
Providing resources and accelerating the development
The OpenJS Foundation is responsible for expanding the JavaScript community and accelerating the development of JavaScript and other key ecosystem projects. It will provide financial and marketing resources to support projects and working groups. It will act as one stop for all projects within the open JavaScript community for fulfilling their infrastructure, technical, and marketing needs.
Combined governance structure
The merger will provide a combined governance structure to enable all projects, regardless of their sizes, to benefit from experienced mentors as they progress through the project life cycle. It will encourage collaboration across the JavaScript ecosystem and affiliated standard bodies to create a single home for any project in the JavaScript ecosystem.
Improved membership experience
The OpenJS Foundation brings together the goals of both the JavaScript and Node.js foundations, so companies or organizations that want to support JavaScript will no longer have to choose between the two.
This will also eliminate the operational redundancies between the two organizations and streamline the experience for member companies that provide financial support. Additionally, it will provide a single point of entry to new and prospective members for getting involved in open source JavaScript project and create a simpler and more engaging experience for them.
Many Twitter users were excited about this announcement and believe that this a major step towards the overall growth of the JavaScript open source ecosystem.
#OpenJSFoundation – a monumental move to help advance the entire JS OSS ecosystem. Not only the industry partners but HUGE THANK YOU to the COMMUNITY, which came together amazingly to work through and help make this happen! Excited about what future holds @Nodejs 🤝 @the_jsf https://t.co/0Y06XmJmRG
— Gaurav Seth (@gauravseth) March 13, 2019
Exciting news for growing the JavaScript ecosystem. The Node.js Foundation and the JS Foundation are joining forces. #OpenJSFoundationhttps://t.co/1Aes3tytzn
— Agoric (@agoric) March 12, 2019
To know more in detail, check out the official announcement.
Read Next
Node.js and JS Foundation announce intent to merge; developers have mixed feelings
Node.js announces security updates for all their active release lines for August 2018
Why use JavaScript for machine learning?