Modified globals is the fault of bad coding, not node. There are valid reasons for using globals, but it's well known to be bad practice to modify standard classes these days.

If someone wants not yet released features, they can compile to JS/node with source maps (i.e. Traceur, Coffeescript). This also solves the cps/callback issue (i.e. Iced Coffeescript).

Npm is also incredibly easy to publish to (one line in the CLI). That leads to a ton of packages released that would otherwise hit friction in release process in other package managers.