Standard, a Javascript Library With 3M Downloads Per Month, Now Showing Ads When Installed via NPM

guest · Aug 25, 2019

Standard, a Javascript Library With 3M Downloads Per Month, Now Showing Ads When Installed via NPM

npm install funding #1381

I've already spoken to a few of you about this idea, but I'd like to share it with the broader community now that standard 14 has shipped.

Background: I think that the current model of sustaining open source is not working and we need more experimentation. This is one such experiment.
What's the experiment? Whenever standard 14 is installed, we'll display a message from a company that supports open source. The sponsorship pays directly for maintainer time. That is, writing new features, fixing bugs, answering user questions, and improving documentation.
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Reddit thread: A 3mil downloads per month JavaScript library, which is already known for misleading newbies, is now adding paid advertisements to users' terminals

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If ads started showing up in my build logs, I would be extremely concerned. I can't possibly see how the author expects this to go well.
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The maintainer is getting $2000 for these banners because no one else is displaying ads there. Once other library authors notice this opportunity, they'll start adding ads too. Then the average payout comes down. But since we've already accepted ads here, some authors will include more annoying ads for slightly more money.
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He's now pumping advertisements to developers' shell terminals. Making thousands of dollars off this ESLint config file, without sharing a dime of that revenue with the upstream ESLint developers who actually deserve it.
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guest · Aug 30, 2019

npm bans terminal ads
JavaScript community's negative reaction to recent experiment kills potential avenue for funding open-source projects
August 29, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/npm-bans-terminal-ads/

After last week a popular JavaScript library started showing full-blown ads in the npm command-line interface, npm, Inc., the company that runs the npm tool and website, has taken a stance and plans to ban such behavior in the future.

"We are always working on improving our policies and expand on our commitments to the community," Ahmad Nassri, npm, Inc. CTO told ZDNet in an email this week.
"To that end, we're making updates to our policies to be more explicit about the type of commercial content we do deem not acceptable."

One developer went as far as creating the first-ever terminal ad blocker.
Linode and LogRocket, the two companies who signed up to show ads via Funding in developers' npm terminals, also backed out in the face of negative comments from web developers -- their primary customers.
DEVELOPMENT ON "FUNDING" PROJECT CEASES
Yesterday, shortly after Nassri reached out to ZDNet to inform us of the upcoming npm policy change, Aboukhadijeh also announced he was stopping development on the Funding library, effectively killing the project.
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