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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

No, this is what freedom and innovation looks like.

Javascript has become mostly a lost cause as far as open source development goes, as it's basically owned and controlled by NPM Inc and corporate interests now, but WebAssembly at least still has the possibility of remaining open.

At the very least, we should go through a period of experimentation by the community to settle on the best possible solutions (or sets of solution) and let things mature a bit, first. Now is not the time to bless a single runtime, package manager, etc.

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WebAssembly is developed by the same corporations that own JavaScript.

They don't own the runtime and package manager, though.

Although Wasmer does come with a package manager (WAPM) that uses a proprietary registry like NPM, at least the developers have said they're committed to decentralized hosting[0]. Maybe someone can come up with a completely distributed package management alternative, which I would prefer, but at least Webassembly isn't yet at the degree of centralization that Javascript is.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19732794

Which are utterly meaningless with the specification developed by said corporations.

And really, the only thing going for WebAssembly is being the PNaCL that those corporations were willing to agree on.

It's not the best possible scenario but "utterly meaningless" is hyperbole.

Certainly it's better not to have every aspect of a language be centralized. It's already near impossible to distribute Javascript, or even software in many languages, without going through NPM. WebAssembly, thankfully, isn't there yet.

It surely is meaningless, because whatever your favourite WebAssembly implementation is capable of, ultimately it only matters if it is spec compliant.

A spec, which is under control of those organisations.

What organisations should control a standard if not those that develop implementations?

The point is that WebAssembly isn't something independent of JavaScript masters control as the OP is portraying.

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