I'm a little surprised they didn't go with a model similar to GitHub: - Payment plans with X number of private modules, or $1/month per private module - Unlimited paying/non-paying collaborators for private modules (perhaps only read access for non-paying)
With npm's model all my collaborators will have to pay for npm private modules as well.
The way that npm has structured things, programmers pay once for membership in a commercial tier, where presumably money is already changing hands to work on private code. I think this makes much more sense and won't bias the code itself in a negative direction.
I hadn't thought of it from the point of encouraging/incentivizing the authoring of more public packages.
But couldn't the current model then discourage the authoring of public packages, and lead people to start primarily publishing private packages.
I assume whatever reason people are authoring public packages today won't change because they get a paid account. Let's at least hope that's the case.