Jest moves to the OpenJS Foundation

Meta has transferred ownership of Jest, its open source JavaScript testing framework, to the OpenJS Foundation. The framework sees more than 17 million weekly downloads and over 38,000 GitHub stars, and is used by companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Stripe.

From internal tool to community project

Jest began in 2011 as an internal project called "jst," created when Facebook rewrote its chat feature in JavaScript and needed a fast test-driven development cycle. It was open-sourced in 2014 and maintained part-time by Meta engineers until 2016, when Christoph Nakazawa, then a Meta engineer and now a core contributor, rebuilt the project with a dedicated team. Features users recognize today—including performance improvements, watch mode, and snapshot testing—came out of that period.

In 2018, Meta launched the Jest Open Collective to support non-Meta contributors. That collective has raised over $70,000, funding community-led improvements such as electron wrappers, inline snapshots, interactive snapshot mode, watch mode plugins, better defaults, and ESM support.

Community governance takes over

Jest is now primarily maintained by external core contributors led by Simen Bekkhus, and since 2018 nearly all contributions have come from outside Meta. Transferring ownership means the Jest core team—Bekkhus, Nakazawa, Orta Therox, Michał Pierzchała, and Rick Hanlon—will lead the project under the OpenJS Foundation's neutral governance structure.

The OpenJS Foundation already hosts JavaScript projects such as jQuery, Node.js, Electron, AMP, and webpack, and is backed by corporate members including Google, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft.

No change to development or usage

The transfer does not alter how Jest is developed, released, or used. Jest 28 was published recently with contributions from over 60 contributors, two thirds of whom were first-time contributors. Long-term, the community aims to keep lowering the barrier for new contributors as the project continues to be led by its core team.

Incubation steps ahead

Over the next few months, the project will complete the OpenJS Foundation's incubation checklist. That includes transferring Jest's domain, repository, website, and other assets to the foundation, updating the code of conduct and contributor license agreement, and publishing a project charter with governance policies covering commit access and leadership selection.