The processing.js project was started by John Resig who wanted to utilize the HTML5 canvas element and take advantage of the Java Processing language. It took about seven months to get a working version, consisting of 5000 lines of codebut it was not a complete port of the Processing language. (Resig 2008).

This initial port had limitations on what parts “In development I worked in a backwards manner. Instead of building the API up from the ground - I worked from the top, down, implementing enough of the processing language API to get individual demos working.” -http://ejohn.org/blog/processingjs/  The project, similarly to other open source products, was released with the hope that a developer community will converge around it was able and contribute to parsedevelopment. MoreoverThe Mozilla experience however, the release contained suggests that proprietary products may not be well-suited to distributed development if they have tightly-coupled architectures. There is a need to create an “architecture for participation,” one that promotes ease of understanding by limiting module size, and ease of contribution (MacCormack, Rusnak and Baldwin 2004). In order to facilitate an architecture for participation a lot number of gaps as some things needed to happen. First and foremost the source code must be readily available. Secondly, the inner workings of the project and the missing functionality was not yet supported (Resig 2008)must be publicized and a dialog started.