In the world of web development, a comparison between Fastify and Express is hard to avoid. These two widely-used Node.js web application frameworks have their unique strengths and weaknesses. In this blog, we will delve deeper into two critical aspects - governance and ecosystem, shedding light on the crucial differences between the two and the impacts they have on the development process.
The governance model of an open-source project directly affects its sustainability and growth potential. It determines how decisions are made, who makes them, and how resources are allocated, which ultimately affects the project's long-term success.
Fastify operates under an OPEN Open Source Project model, and it is housed in the OpenJS Foundation. This foundation provides a legal framework for the project and business support, contributing significantly to Fastify's stability. In the event that Fastify transitions to a legacy project, as is the case with Express currently, the OpenJS Foundation ensures continued sponsorship and resources for maintenance.
Moreover, Fastify utilizes an Open OPEN Source contributor guide, which outlines a clear pathway for becoming a core contributor. This transparent, merit-based system encourages contributions, leading to a thriving, diverse, and robust developer community.
Express, on the other hand, presents a more complex scenario. Originally sold to Strongloop, which IBM later acquired, Express's relationship with its parent company has been fraught. IBM's lack of resource allocation to Express has resulted in significant challenges, even leading the lead maintainer to threaten the deletion of Express from NPM.
Express's contributor onboarding process is less transparent than Fastify's. The project's policy stipulates that contributors with "non-trivial" contributions may become core contributors. However, the ambiguity of "non-trivial" and the fact that the tech lead must approve all PRs has resulted in a sluggish contributor onboarding process.
The ecosystem of a web framework is equally vital as it determines the availability and quality of resources, such as middleware, that developers can use.
Fastify stands out with its highly curated ecosystem. The core team creates plugins hosted in the Fastify GitHub organization and audits and endorses third-party plugins. This curated approach ensures high-quality resources for Fastify developers, reducing time wasted on discovering, consuming, and debugging middleware.
In contrast, Express's ecosystem is ungoverned, making finding suitable middleware a complicated and time-consuming process. The lack of curation and quality assurance means that developers often have to sift through multiple options for the same purpose, with no guarantees of their effectiveness or reliability.
Moreover, the absence of an asynchronous initialization phase in Express leads to potential issues with middleware libraries, as each author attempts to solve the same problem independently, often leading to inconsistent solutions.
Choosing between Fastify and Express is not a straightforward task. While Express's wide usage and rich history bring a vast range of resources and community knowledge, its governance and ecosystem issues may pose challenges in the long term.