Back when the npm registry was really struggling with reliability (I believe because it was secondary to profit for Joyent) I was saying we needed a decentralized registry solution.
But right when that got some upvotes on r/node, within a few days isaacs had npm inc. going. And within a few weeks or months, the npm registry was pretty rock solid. And I have not had a single registry issue in forever.
And npm 4 works well, and I'm sure npm@5 works even better.
I still think it makes sense to have a decentralized repository and I guess its nice to have a non-commercial alternative to npm. But for me its not important anymore because npm is working really great now.
Reliability sure was tough in those days. npm wasn't secondary or tertiary or any-ary to Joyent. It was my nights and weekends project the whole time I was there, and IrisCouch generously donated infrastructure, which we pushed to its very limit once Nodejitsu acquired them.
But right when that got some upvotes on r/node, within a few days isaacs had npm inc. going. And within a few weeks or months, the npm registry was pretty rock solid. And I have not had a single registry issue in forever.
And npm 4 works well, and I'm sure npm@5 works even better.
I still think it makes sense to have a decentralized repository and I guess its nice to have a non-commercial alternative to npm. But for me its not important anymore because npm is working really great now.