About the Developer
I am Andy Futcher, the developer and maintainer of Main JS and Main HTML project and professional analyst at the not-for-profit health insurer.
Story of Main HTML
When I was a youngster I had a dream of developing a software system that two billion people would use and love (not sure where that number came from, but there it is.) As I've grown older I've fallen in love with all things Open Source, from being an exclusive Linux user and enjoyer (even Linux gamer too) to a huge believer in the use of and community around all things Open Source software. So in 2025 what started as a project for my wife's passion for vegetarian foods (it's own story of transformation and sustainability,) combined an apathy for the current state of web hosting and JS libraries, I decided to make my own!
What I came up with was intended to be the core JS components for my wife's recipe site and digital books, but soon I realised the potential in making it available to everyone – thus Main HTML and Main JS was born. Many aspects of the design really stood out from other JS frameworks and libraries.
Most notably the portability of refactoring the base paths allows for freedom to deploy, test and work on the project in both offline and online states. This means that design on live domains, in cloud storage, on local hardware or mobile environments is a game changer. Additionally the adaptability to modern elements, built-in ARIA accessibility and tiny size and lightweight JIT compiler overheads means it is fast and usable just about anywhere – this further enhancing the transportability potential. Another takeaway is the decision I made early in development to leveraging native ECMAscript / JavaScript (JS) with no library dependencies, reducing tech debt and increasing performance as the code execution is as close to bare metal as is possible for a website to operate.
The last observation is that releasing on the GPLv3 licence while reducing dependence on additional libraries also ensures maintainability (and forkability) of the core components, encouraging others to fork the project and move the game forward together in a community fashion.
Main HTML & Main.JS Founding Statement
First commitment; Main JS is free and open source and will always be, my goal is to give everyone possible a first class ticket to the most well known and well-written markup language on earth; HTML.
Second commitment: relates my first commitment that it is not just because of the projects chosen licence (GPL,) but it's a commitment to remain impartial and community focused and to never sell out or steer Main JS away from the core focus of portability and maintainability.
