OpenJS Foundation 2021 End-of-Year Update

The global pandemic brought the OpenJS Foundation closer to the end-users and contributors of its hosted JavaScript projects. With more than 97 percent of the world’s websites using JavaScript, it is the foundation for online commerce, economic growth, and innovation.

Following the 25^th anniversary of JavaScript, the OpenJS Foundation continues to see an exciting future for the number one programming language, evidenced by the diverse, multi-stakeholder communities that make up OpenJS.

OpenJS is a global community — two years ago, created by the merger of the Node.js and JS Foundations. The OpenJS foundation hosts 38 JavaScript projects, including Node.js, AMP, Electron, jQuery, webpack, Node-RED, and Appium.

OpenJS is a member-supported organization, with companies like IBM, Google, Joyent, Microsoft, GoDaddy, and Netflix, and more providing financial support and active involvement in our governance process.

Netflix has been an end-user and contributor of the Node.js project since 2013 and one of the largest-scale Node.js deployments in production. As platforms grow, so do their needs. However, the core infrastructure is often not designed to handle these new challenges as it was optimized for a relatively simple task. Netflix, a member of the OpenJS Foundation, had to overcome this challenge as it evolved from a massive web streaming service to a content production platform. Netflix runs a serverless Node.js platform that powers all the devices’ user interfaces and use cases for web applications supporting content production.

In 2021 OpenJS welcomed new members: American Express, Bloomberg, Coinbase, NodeXperts, Sentry, and Stream. JavaScript is core to each of these companies’ leadership positions in the market, and by supporting OpenJS, they support the infrastructure and long-term growth of key open source projects on which they rely.

As a global leader in business and financial information, data, news, and analytics, Bloomberg has a long-term investment in JavaScript through contributions to core projects and ongoing participation in standards, notably for the JavaScript language itself. Bloomberg has more than 10,000 frontend apps and tens of millions of lines of JavaScript code that cover both consumer web and the Bloomberg Terminal, the desktop application core to Bloomberg’s business. Furthermore, more than 2,000 software engineers are writing JavaScript at Bloomberg, another testament to the company’s innovation and commitment to the programming language and the open source community.

At OpenJS World 2021, OpenJS Board President Todd Moore, VP of Open Technology and Developer Advocacy at IBM, joined OpenJS Executive Director Robin Ginn for an opening keynote. They described how, through OpenJS, the industry could confidently enter a JavaScript ecosystem that prioritizes stability and openness in the shared technologies while recognizing the unique needs of individual participants.

OpenJS Foundation Executive Director Robin Ginn extended an open invitation: “Our goal at OpenJS is to incubate and sustain a healthy JavaScript ecosystem. To get involved, go to our website at openjsf.org/collaboration. Through your participation, we know the best is yet to come for the future of JavaScript.”

Todd Moore shared why IBM invests in the OpenJS Foundation and why so many of their employees actively participate among OpenJS communities: “IBM and our customers today rely upon many of the open source JavaScript projects hosted at the OpenJS Foundation — it’s in all our economic interests to invest in that technology as it is the plumbing that creates the opportunity for all of us to share in.”

These efforts are made possible by the dozens of enterprises that support the OpenJS Foundation. To learn how your organization can get involved, click here