Cloudflare acquires Deno, maker of Node.js creator's runtime

What's the deal? Cloudflare announced Friday it is acquiring Deno, the startup behind the programming runtime of the same name. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Who's involved? Deno was co-founded by Bert Belder and Node.jsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → creator Ryan Dahl. It had raised $26 million, including a Series A led by Sequoia.

Why now? Deno recently launched cells, an open source implementation of Workers — Cloudflare's platform for building and running software on its network. Kenton Varda, principal engineer for Cloudflare Workers, wrote that the launch "delighted" his team.

What's the endgame? Cloudflare plans to use the acquisition to improve its Workers programming model and platform. Dahl wrote that his team is "joining Cloudflare to make the Workers programming model a mainstream way to build servers."

What's the open-source angle? Varda pushed back on "a popular theory" that Cloudflare "made Cloudflare Workers work differently from other cloud platforms in order to create 'lock-in.'" He argued that "being open source and giving people an escape hatch is good business."

The signal: By folding in Deno's team and open source work, Cloudflare is betting it can turn Workers into a default way developers build server-side software — while using openness, rather than lock-in, to win them over.

Read more: TechCrunch

Image credit: Lachlan Hardy