diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index b157ddd3f2..b7860dcc06 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,6 +1,14 @@
-Evented I/O for V8 javascript.
+io.js
 ===
 
+This repository began as a GitHub fork of
+[joyent/node](https://github.com/joyent/node) where contributions,
+releases, and contributorship are under an
+[open governance model](./CONTRIBUTING.md#governance).
+
+We intend to release, with increasing regularity, releases which are
+compatible with npm ecosystem that has been built to date for node.js.
+
 ### To build:
 
 Prerequisites (Unix only):