---
title: "Decommissioned! An Unformatted Hate Email Was Enough For A Popular Node.js Project"
source: "https://tomaszs2.medium.com/decommissioned-an-unformatted-hate-email-was-enought-for-a-popular-node-js-project-c24fd287f582"
author:
  - "[[Tom Smykowski]]"
published: 2024-05-17
created: 2024-10-29
description: "James Sumners is one of the most respected figures in the Node.js wide community due to maintaining multiple essential projects. Among this projects you know for sure Fastify, a light Node.js web…"
tags:
  - "clippings"
---
[

![Tom Smykowski](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:88:88/1*QBY4yLB-8qciSZmu9tYqpA.jpeg)

](https://tomaszs2.medium.com/?source=post_page---byline--c24fd287f582--------------------------------)

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*J5AwdEr2hNQzhcc6gFlv5g.png)

## A lack of time, usage and an outrageous email led LDAPjs core maintainer to decommission it. When people will learn to format their code?

James Sumners is one of the most respected figures in the Node.js wide community due to maintaining multiple essential projects.

Among this projects you know for sure [Fastify](https://github.com/fastify/fastify), a light Node.js web server or [Pino](https://github.com/pinojs/pino), fast json logger, he was involved also as a core [maintainer](https://james.sumners.info/) of PL/JSON.

He’s B.Sc., Mathematics accomplished at Clayton State University / US.

Since August 2019 he also maintains another Node.js gem: LDAPjs:

> LDAPjs provides a framework for building LDAP servers, and a client to interact with standard LDAP servers, for applications built with JavaScript on Node.js.

LDAP is a communication [protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_Protocol):

> The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP /ˈɛldæp/) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.\[1\]

It’s a standard used broadly by many organisations to discover and connect devices like servers or printers.

LDAPjs specifically is an implementation of the protocol for Node.js. That way Javascript developers can build services utilizing this LDAP easily.

Among companies and projects that use LDAPjs we can find Seagate, Tracktr, Infiscal, Homarr, OpenSign, and Amazon.

That list only some of the companies and there are many many more.

We’re talking about successful, open source project with wide usage, 1.6k stars, 402 forks and 68 contributors.

Unfortunately today James Sumners decided to archive the project. It means that in that state, project does not accept any new contributions but is still available online.

I was thinking maybe it got deprecated or wasn’t used at all. But it’s used and is actively developed. Last version is from December 2023 what is natural for long standing, mature projects.

So what happened?

On the official page of the project we can read the reasons for the project’s [decommission](https://github.com/ldapjs/node-ldapjs).

These boil down to three major issues:

1. The core maintainer doesn’t have time
2. He isn’t in a position where he’d use it anymore
3. He got a hate email

The first two points are quite important to discuss first. James developed this project when he needed it in his company. But he moved to other company where he doesn’t need it. So he doesn’t have the purpose to develop it further.

It’s perfectly understandable. He writes that some features would need a full workweek to be finished, an amount of time he can’t afford.

That’s also perfectly reasonable. Why would he spend his time, as a trained specialist on a project, if he gains nothing in return.

There are many other activities person can take in his free time that are far more fun than maintaining pro-bono an open source project for corporations.

What I am quite surprised of is that all of these companies didn’t make sure LDAPjs developers can allocate time to work on a project that they use. I mean money of course.

It’s unfortunately a sad moment for the project, but as every other it’s also a good moment to appreciate the hard work James and other contributors have put into the project over the years. We have to remember James, and tens of hundreds of developers arouns the world do a lot of open source pro-bono work.

Usually such prominent developers don’t reach the headlines working on open source projects for free just because they find it a meaningful to do.

Unfortunately, not everyone knows that, wants to acknowledge it or even maintain the basics of politeness.

James unfortunately was targeted by one individual that decided to vent in an email to him over his trouble with using the LDAPjs project. The email is way below any [standards](https://github.com/ldapjs/node-ldapjs) so I won’t even quote it.

For James that email was enought. In his announcement he mentions that email as one of the causes why he decommissions the project.

It’s perfectly understandable for me. He works very hard over the years to support the wide community and companies with great tools. He doesn’t get paid, and recognized. At the end he just gets a hate email.

What’s technically the most outrageous part for me is that the dude even didn’t care to format his code:

![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*3qXlWD6YDif-pv4ewgJn3w.jpeg)

Source: https://github.com/ldapjs/node-ldapjs

It tells about this dude even more than the rest of the outrageous email.

And that’s all we really need to know. While LDAPjs is decommissioned, James wrote he is open to handing the project into good hands if he will be able to properly validate if the new person or organization in charge will be a good and safe fit for the project.

Also, since the projects is online it can be still used, and also forks can be developed.

While that means users of LDAPjs are safe, I really wished important open source projects didn’t lose such prominent contributors.

I think I’ll send some recognition emails to the maintainers of the projects I use. Hopefully it will make a day for them.

Cheers!