It seems some open-sourcers strategies may have been to gain fame from finding existing packages then duplicating them (with the exact same functionality, or a subset or superset) instead of sending PRs or using existing solutions. Package maintainers can want to do this to build up a portfolio of popular packages, to consolidate popularity and power to themselves, and thus gain funding. Willfull ignorance of alternatives at the time of publishing stems from the similar intention. Naivity however may be accidental, in which case consolidation of duplicates can be a desired outcome where possible, as it consolidates maintainership and features for a better user experience. There is valid reason for duplication however, where an original author was not receptive to pull requests.

This gist is to look into such instances. It is not to say whether or a case was accidental or not. Only that such duplication exists, in the hope that it can be noted and hopefully resolved.

Eventually one could do up a programmatic solution for this, to go through the thousands of packages required for a complete listing (including first commit, first changelog entry, first tag, and first npm version, and details of the original versions for direct comparison, as well as download counts). However, until that is done, please add comments of other instances.