It didn't break because of the source, it broke because of all the packaging/module bullshit around it. It seems the Javascript ec(h)osystem has firmly come down on the philosophy of "make modules very easy to use, but very difficult to make (correctly)".

The predictable explosion in dependency trees has caused the predictable problems like this one. I feel I much prefer the C/C++ way of "modules are easy to make, but difficult to use".