I don't think it's relevant - if there are other libraries depending on it, the code probably needs to stay. Maybe there's a bug but it's been worked around. The library has been up long enough for others to depend on it and publish their own code using it.

You could have a "soft" unpublish so the module is still available for any libraries that depend on that specific version but it won't be picked up in the "greater than" version case.

In terms of the owner wanting to have it taken down, there should probably be a licence flag that hands control over to the host so at the very least an audit can be carried out before removal.

EDIT some discussion rather than downvotes would be nice. In this case we have a library with a totally permissive license, used by screeds of other libraries, with 2.4M downloads a month. The pragmatist in me says that there should be some mechanism by which pushing a button shouldn't screw up everyone's day. Let's discuss potential solutions.

Rust/Cargo solves this with a `yank` option. Cargo will no longer automatically switch to that version, but if you already use it, nothing changes (though there might be a warning or something)

  > if you simply no longer wish to be associated
  > with the organization anymore?

Given that it's open source, (specifically WTFPL in this case), that's not something you can actually. Or rather, it _is_ okay for npm to republish stuff: that's part of the license.