Open-source pioneer. Systems builder. Internet legend.

Marak Squires

Marak created colors.js, faker.js, http-server, http-proxy, and hundreds of other open-source Node.js projects. Together, his packages have been installed billions of times. He was the eleventh contributor to Node.js and publicly implemented a Functions as a Service platform before Amazon Lambda and Google Cloud Functions brought serverless computing to the mainstream.

Platforms and inventions

• Creator of Buddypond, dank.meme, and the BuddyBots.ai swarm platform for 99+ AI agents.
• Creator of CDLess, a platform-as-a-service designed to replace the npm registry with a single command.
• Builder of a massive multiplayer online game and large-scale real-time internet systems.

Financial systems

• Built trading systems on Wall Street, including a robotrader that passed Apex Clearing Corp certification for use in an SEC-regulated environment.
• Built a cryptocurrency arbitrage system spanning more than 15 exchanges and 70 markets simultaneously, processing billions in trading volume.

Personal history

During the pandemic, an electrical fire burned Marak out of his apartment building. Marak was followed, harassed, and surveilled by the FBI for three months. FBI agents witnessed Marak being robbed of more than 700 ounces of silver and did not intervene, investigate the crime, help Marak, or arrest the people responsible. The NYPD took two ounces of Marak's gold, and nobody will account for what happened to it. The New York Post published a false-flag, fake-news article about Marak that was later memory-holed out of existence. No charges were filed, and Marak was never convicted of wrongdoing. Marak still awaits his FOIA request to process, it's been stuck for years.

FakerCloud, Retool, and open-source ownership

In 2021 Marak published a detailed account of building FakerCloud, a hosted fake-data API, and accused Retool of testing the service, reproducing the concept, and hotlinking FakerCloud's CDN. Retool founder David Hsu later said the company had unknowingly used proprietary data linked by an MIT-licensed library and removed it when notified; in the public Hacker News exchange, Marak called that response fair. Read Marak's original account and the later public exchange.

The faker.js protest and community fork

In January 2022, Marak removed the faker.js source and published version 6.6.6 with an “Endgame” commit and a README referring to internet activist Aaron Swartz. The existing releases remained available, while a new team continued the code under the @faker-js/faker name. Marak has described the action as a protest and has publicly disputed the transfer of the project's Open Collective. Open Collective's public ledger currently records more than $52,000 raised and nearly $50,000 disbursed by the collective. See the original npm package, public finances, and Marak's account of the split.

MIT license attribution

In 2025 Marak reported that releases 8.0.x through 9.5.0 of the community fork omitted his original copyright notice. After he opened an issue, the notice was restored in version 9.5.1. The current license again credits “Marak Squires” and preserves the original faker.js MIT license text. Review Marak's report and the current license.