Nodejs itself is, but when you install a node project manually, you type npm install and wait while it downloads the 500 different packages it depends on.

Debian follows the same philosophy as for other more traditional languages and expects that all these dependencies are packaged as individual Debian packages.

Just jumping in to say that this is making me genuinely reconsider adopting a licence/policy that forbids repackaging: the fact that someone can repackage my project, but worse, and still use my project's name? Absolutely not. I do not want the burden that inevitably comes when people complain to me that this or that is missing from a repackage.

I mean, that's just how OSS works. Anyone can fork your thing, do whatever, and call it a day. Going MIT or whatever won't save you either - this repackaging business is basically the entire business model of AWS.

Forking is fine, do whatever, but as soon as you make actual changes to the code then adopt your own name. This is what trademarks are for, it's just that official trademark registration is somewhat inaccessible (eg: cost) for open source projects. Could you imagine trademarking every little project you make just in-case it gets repackaged by someone who tears huge chunks of it out?

As it turns out, trademarks for small open-source projects are effectively worthless (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44883634), so there's effectively no real solution to people appropriating your project's name while repackaging their inferior fork of it.

Yes but not all packages written in those languages are.