I think there should be more praise on these guys for what they accomplished given the state of JavaScript when they started. They saw a problem and came up with a solution. Was it perfect? No, but it's not this abominable creation.
Much like John Resig's work on jQuery nudged JavaScript forward, so did the work on CommonJS/Node.
CJS was doing just fine in Node.js for nearly a decade before ESM came along and made everything more difficult by shoving browser constraints into a server-side runtime. ESM may be the right direction for the whole ecosystem in the long run, but it's a little backwards to say the perfectly good incumbent system is "hurting" the language because everyone who invested in it doesn't want to go through the pain of migrating to a new fashionable system that is worse in many ways.
"In 2009, CommonJS was exactly what JavaScript needed. The group took a tough problem and forced through a solution that continues to be used millions of times a day.
But with ESM as the standard and the focus shifting towards cloud primitives — the edge, browsers, and serverless compute — and CommonJS simply doesn’t cut it. ESM is a better solution for developers, as they can write browser-compliant code — and for users who get a better end experience."