some corporation invests in a brand
they found out that there is already someone using that brand which is obviously not good because the brand’s worth is then shared between multiple parties
so they decide to take the name away, keeping the whole value to themselves, but obviously they ask first nicely hoping to get lucky, most of the times people give up their values if they are asked nicely and it’s not very important for them personally
obviously in this case, Azer felt that he deserves as much right to the name as anyone else and i think we all agree that in situations like these there should be careful consideration who deserves what from the shared property (specifically the name on npm), so he responded clearly stating that he builds something for the common good, something open on that name and he doesn’t care what the company does anywhere else, but on npm, there is something built on it and it should deserve the same respect as anyone else’s work imho.
and this is where they fucking threatened him, which is not surprising, given they are more powerful and they have the law on their side, even if we all know it’s a bad law. when they saw that Azer is unphased from their threats and gives (probably because of anger) a value of the name that’s way more than what they would’ve wanted to pay.
so they just continue their original strategy of threatening people, but this time npm. npm given that it shares its core values with kik, instantly gives them what they want, and writes a bullshit PR email to Azer, and it’s all legal, and all fine, and in a world where money talks it’s not even offensive or anything.
Azer realizes that he misplaced his trust in npm and can not deal with this in any other way than cutting all ties between him an npm. he does have enough conscience to both explain what happened and make it clear, that he doesn’t want to stop anyone from putting back up even his own code, it’s just has to be someone else not him because he can not bare any more connection to npm.
so in short, some corporation tries to make money from some name, realizes that it already has an owner, and like a cuckoo pushes the other eggs out from the nest, this corporation does the most cost effective strategy of getting rid of the shared owner so they can keep all the value of the name. to them, it’s all about the money. and because the system is also built to focus mostly on money, they can get away with this. i just don’t understand why good people think that just because it’s somehow legal, it’s also “ok” to do it.