As Ryan Dahl mentions in his post, Joyent has officially become the new home for Node.js. We are excited and honored to be investing this active open source project, and we’re thrilled at the response the technology has received. We believe Node.js is a foundational technology that will enable developers to build the next generation of apps that will finally usher in the Internet of Things era.

Joyent's involvement in Node goes back over a year when our engineering team was looking for a way to write small, low latency network servers and agents for use in our infrastructure management products without having to resort to C or Erlang every time. We knew the async model Node enforced was right, and we knew Javascript would work too, as we'd already fallen in love with Javascript-outside-the-browser building the Joyent Smart Platform. Mostly, we recognized the potential in the code and its inventor to solve problems far beyond our own immediate roadmap, so early this year we invited Ryan to join Joyent and continue developing a community around Node while Joyent provided the real-world battleground for Node to grow up in.

What followed was an impressive groundswell of interest and enthusiasm around Node that blew us away, from the incredible apps written as part of Node Knockout to the announcement just last month that HP had integrated Node.js into webOS 2.0.

We’ve seen growing interest from Joyent customers and partners in several verticals, especially mobile and gaming, who appreciate the exceptional performance improvements Node promises to bring to their apps, but also how they can build new kinds of experiences without sacrificing development productivity.

We see it too. We’ve used Node for our own internal projects to great success, launched a Node hosting service, no.de, and based on those experiences, we're rebuilding the Smart Platform with Node.

It only made sense then to ensure that Ryan got more than a job from Joyent, and that Node got the investment and support Ryan felt it needed. Ryan wants his project to make the world of web and mobile application development a better place. So do we. The agreement we reached to bring Node.js under Joyent's wing is all about ensuring we can do just that.

As Ryan mentions in his post, the only change for members of the community is that the contributor agreement will be directed to Joyent rather than to Ryan. Otherwise, it's business as usual for Node developers.

We look forward to working with community members and organizations interested in using Node for their projects. You can keep up on Node news by subscribing to this very blog (http://joyeur.com).

Finally, congratulations Ryan! Node really is an amazing achievement! You've done good, kid!

Mark Mayo (CTO, Joyent)

FAQ

What effectively changes now?

The contributor license agreement will be addressed to Joyent

instead of Ryan. Otherwise everything will remain the same - releases

will be MIT licensed and patches will continue to be accepted from the

community.

I'm a contributor to Node - do I need to sign a new contributor

license agreement (CLA) with Joyent?

No. The CLA will be addressed to Joyent now, but the terms are the same.

Will Node.js remain open source?

Yes! It will remain under the current MIT license.

Will the license change?

No. MIT FTW!

Will I have to pay to use Node now?

No. See above.

Is Joyent really committed to open source?

Yes! Joyent has been an open source contributor for our entire history. See http://github.com/joyent.

What will be Ryan's involvement with Node in the future?

Ryan will continue to work on the Node project. Joyent will be hiring additional staff to assist Ryan.

What will be the relationship between Node.js and Joyent?

Joyent will continue to spend resources and effort nurturing Node. Joyent intends to continue offering products and services that let developers build, deploy, and operate their apps online. Our initial No.de service is for customers who want a simple way to deploy and host Node.js applications.

How will releases be handled going forward?

There will be no change to the release process.