Anyone who thinks io.js has "won" is a) living in the tech bubble and b) missing the point of the fork.
The community at large is unconcerned about io.js, they are developing for node.js because that's how they (we) all make money. Node was in no danger for that fact alone.
The winner here is the open source community. We now have 2 excellent options: a beta for the bleeding edge, stability for the enterprise, and forward progress for both.
ES6 is great, but for anyone who wants to write isomorphic code without a lot of pain in compilers, is limited by browser adoption. Expect that to be at least 3 years out, during which node will continue to succeed.
It's very difficult to unpack this, just so much wrong.
First let's start with the misconception that io.js is "bleeding edge" or that it is any less stable than node. This is 100% factually incorrect, hundreds of open tickets have been closed with io.js that have not for node. It is tenfold more stable, and it's trajectory has already outpaced in two weeks what nodejs has in a year and a half.
Second, this is not a win for either party or the community. For the community, you'll get people like you who now think node.js is somehow automatically more stable and reputable because they have a fancy big-wig 'foundation'. For io.js team, it now shows Joyents true colors that they are stubborn and wish to continue down their path and are now unlikely to merge at all in the future. For the node.js team, it now means they are just prolonging their decline. They still have not a single full time node developer, and have lost almost all of the developers who actually made node.js with 0% chance they'll ever come back (the governance will never be compatible with Joyents new corporate dictatorship model).
Finally, the choice to use io.js should not be ES6, it should be the fact it's a more stable, secure, and actively developed project, plain and simple. It does not force you to use ES6 so I don't know why you're talking about browser adoption at all. I have io.js running in production right now and I didn't change a single line of code when 'porting' my codebase from an old node.js installation.
This. I love it when people think io.js is less stable. I mean, how hard would it be to think about it: one of them has half a year of open v8 bugs that the other has closed. One runs on actively maintained v8 and the other does not. One has all the core contributors and the other does not... doesn't sound like hard math to me.
You're entirely missing the point if you think this is just about ES6 or even a better v8.
There are a number of core contributors to Node.js that are unhappy with Joyent's stewardship of node.js. The core contributors want to work on the node.js core and provide new features. Joyent has not enabled these core contributors to make these improvements, and have seemingly alienated some great developers like Ben Noordhuis for political reasons.
Hence the io.js fork.
It's been clear from the beginning that the io.js folks are willing to work with Joyent and node.js, if Joyent is willing to give up its iron fisted control of the project.
This is one of the greatest attributes of open source; the ability to fork. Both io.js and Node.js can succeed independently of each other. The server side javascript community is as vibrant as ever -- with adoption ramping up exponentially among big enterprises and startups alike.
The foundation itself is a great step forward for Node.js, and will result in much needed enterprise investment in the runtime.
The community at large is unconcerned about io.js, they are developing for node.js because that's how they (we) all make money. Node was in no danger for that fact alone.
The winner here is the open source community. We now have 2 excellent options: a beta for the bleeding edge, stability for the enterprise, and forward progress for both.
ES6 is great, but for anyone who wants to write isomorphic code without a lot of pain in compilers, is limited by browser adoption. Expect that to be at least 3 years out, during which node will continue to succeed.