First of all, the title “How One Programmer Broke the Internet by Deleting a Tiny Piece of code”, is extremely intriguing. Before reading the article in its entirety the title shocked me to think how much power 11 lines of code can have. After reading the article, my first reaction was that it is crazy how dependent web application development is on programmers that do contribute to npm. I feel like it should not be that easy for one person to have that much control over whether something is running or not. You would think to make a change that could cause that much of a severity, in this case, those 11 lines of code, you would think this action would need approval from multiple other people in order to avoid a situation from happening like this. I guess Koculu was right when he said open-source gives “more power to the people”. However I guess it’s up to the people to make ethical choices.
If I were another company especially those who work with important software, I would be anxious after an event like this had occurred. I would ask myself, “in the future, will npm cave into any legal threat and cause havoc for the rest of us again?” It’s an important question to think about and ponder about this web of dependencies. Questions that I have are how are going to trust other people after an event like this occurs. Maybe companies are working toward creating more security in accessing information like this?
In my opinion, Koculu abused his power because at the end of the say, open-source, the community is about helping each other out. Out of all people he should know that. In an interview he even said he was self-taught and even thanked open source for his learning process in learning how to code. In order to prevent this from happening again, contracts should be put in place noting that purposely disrupting code to mess with other people comes with consequences. Yes, Koculu was protesting, but he also caused important software to fall apart with only 11 lines of code. I am not sure how people would monitor whether or not people are acting ethically with open source code but it is something to keep in mind for the future of businesses. It is impressive npm was able to find the problem and restore the 11 lines of code in a short period of time.