Can an inactive npm package name be reclaimed?

[mykhailen]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

Body

I'm working on an open-source project and would like to use the matching unscoped npm package name.

The problem is that the name is already occupied by an unrelated package that:

• was last published around 10 years ago
• gets only a couple of downloads per week
• appears to be no longer maintained
• has an owner I've tried contacting, but I haven't received a response

The naming conflict is becoming inconvenient because the package name also naturally matches our CLI and project-creation flow, e.g. npm create , so users may reasonably expect the npm package with that name to belong to the same project.

I understand that inactivity alone probably doesn't mean a package can simply be taken over, and I don't want to bypass the current owner.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation recently?

Is the right approach to open an npm naming dispute/support request, and under what circumstances does npm actually transfer or release an inactive package name?

I'd especially appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through this process successfully.

[iplanwebsites]

I had no luck with similar cases. Reaching to the owner is pretty much your only option. You can try to ask nicely via social or support, but since there IS some traffic on that package I'd be very surprised if you can even get an answer from someone at NPM about this.
It's pretty common for brands so developper are usually not afraid of brand-sdk and brandjs types of package name.
good luck!