> there are over 2800 legacy mixed-case packages, many of which have the same spelling as other existing lowercase packages

This is insane

Sounds like a typo-squatter’s paradise!

  > This is insane
Not for the JavaScript world.

I hate to deride the entire community, but many of the collective community decisions are smells. I think that the low barrier to entry means that the community has many inexperienced influential people.

A lot of these decisions were made after Javascript went "enterprise" to make it seem more like a "serious" programming language to SV entrepreneurs by a small number of corporations, not necessarily the community.

The bar for entry was always low with javascript, but it also used to be a lot more sane when it was a publicly-driven language.