This morning we – along with several prominent members of the Node.js community – announced our intent to form the Node.js Foundation, an independent foundation that will oversee the production and development of the Node.js project.

Node.js has seen massive growth over the past few years. What was once an innovative developer tool is now the framework of choice for millions of individuals and businesses around the world. They rely on Node.js and will continue to for years to come.

When I arrived at Joyent last summer, it was immediately apparent that the needs of the Node.js community were outgrowing the current project structure. While we were witnessing phenomenal growth and success on the user side, we wanted to take a step forward and allow for even more transparency and innovation on the developer side. The first step was creating the Node.js Advisory Board, which was created to provide collaborative community input to the Node.js project leadership.

What’s Best for Node.js Moving Forward

The Node.js Advisory Board made recommendations on issues such as project governance, code of conduct, intellectual property, API compatibility testing, developer training, community representation and website management that have been extremely valuable to the project. It became clear that we could address the needs of the Node.js project and its diverse ecosystem more effectively via a neutral Foundation — one that will bring in additional resources, grow the Node.js contributor base and foster a healthy ecosystem of product and service providers.

We have taken the recommendations of the Advisory Board and started implementing them in the Node.js project. As the project moves into the Foundation, we will add even more transparency and open the governance model even further to ensure it is driven by the community. We will establish a Board of Directors that handles business issues such as legal, finance, fundraising, and community development. We will also evolve the existing Node.js core team into a Technical Committee staffed by core committers. The TC will run autonomously and drive all technical decisions on the project.

Focusing on Our Community

So far, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity and SAP have joined us as founding members, and we'll continue to add others over the coming months. We want the project to represent the diverse interests and perspectives of the community at large and are committed to including organizations of all sizes and individuals. In our efforts to open the Foundation to everyone, we will provide scaled sponsorship levels to make participation possible at any budget.

We have selected the Linux Foundation to advise us on the best way to structure and run the Foundation to ensure it is effective at growing, developing, and supporting the Node.js community via a neutral foundation. Given their track record with Linux and many other projects, we feel their expertise will be a real asset to the community.

Joyent + Node.js

Joyent will continue to be deeply involved with Node.js. Our business runs on Node.js, and so do our customers’. The contributions and support we offer in regards to Node.js will only grow as the project does. We’ll continue to dedicate multiple developers to full-time core development. As a large scale user of Node.js, we will contribute code, technical support, lessons-learned from our own experience, and other resources to develop the Node.js community.

I would like to thank not only the initial founding members and the Node.js Advisory Board members, but also thank the members of the community who help improve Node.js on a daily basis and have made it the success it is today. With their guidance and support, we’re confident that today marks a promising start to the next chapter of the Node.js story.