Today Node.js creator Ryan Dahl announced on the Node.js developers mailing list that he is ceding his position as “gatekeeper” of the project to fellow Joyent employee Isaac Schlueter. Schlueter is also a core contributor to Node.js, perhaps best known for building Node Package Manager (NPM), which makes it easy to install Node.js applications and manage dependencies. Dahl will continue to work for Joyent in an advisory capacity.

Dahl wrote:

After three years of working on Node, this frees me up to work on research projects. I am still an employee at Joyent and will advise from the sidelines but I won’t be involved in the day-to-day bug fixes. Isaac has final say over what makes it into the releases. Appeals for new features, changes, and bug
fixes should now be directed at him.

At NodeSummit Dahl told SiliconAngle executive editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins that his role has become mostly being a Node.js evangelist and that the Node.js community is “largely autonomous.”

Here’s SiliconAngle founder John Furrier’s and my interview with Dahl at NodeSummit. He hints at the change in his role in the last few minutes as he talks about the important challenges for Node.js:

Watch live video from SiliconANGLE.com on Justin.tv

For some background on Schlueter you can find an interview with him from last August here.