There has been. CJ Silverio gave a talk on that topic at JSConf this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO8hZlgK5zc
See also Entropic as a possible alternative to NPM: https://github.com/entropic-dev/entropic
See also Entropic as a possible alternative to NPM: https://github.com/entropic-dev/entropic
Basically most of the top developers have left the company, others were laid off. It seems to be only a matter of time until none of the people working on npm a year ago remain.