That XKCD reminds me of the case a year or three ago where some solo dev that no-one had ever heard of was maintaining a library that a couple of other very popular and major libraries depended on. Something somewhere broke for some reason, and normally this guy would’ve been all over it before most people even realized there had been a problem, but he was in hospital or jail or something, so dozens of huge projects that indirectly relied on his library came crashing down.
What upset me most was reading the community discussion. I didn’t see a single person saying, “How can we make sure that some money gets to this guy and not just the more visible libraries that rely so heavily on his work?”, even though the issue was obliquely raised in several places, but I did see quite a few saying, “How can we wrest this code out of this guy’s hands against his will and make multiple other people maintain it (but not me, I’m too busy) so we don’t have a single point of failure?”
Well obviously giving financial support is important, but having more than 1 maintainer is good too. Because any amount of money wouldn’t have stopped him from going to the hospital / jail, and certainly wouldn’t help if he got hit by a bus.
That XKCD reminds me of the case a year or three ago where some solo dev that no-one had ever heard of was maintaining a library that a couple of other very popular and major libraries depended on. Something somewhere broke for some reason, and normally this guy would’ve been all over it before most people even realized there had been a problem, but he was in hospital or jail or something, so dozens of huge projects that indirectly relied on his library came crashing down.
What upset me most was reading the community discussion. I didn’t see a single person saying, “How can we make sure that some money gets to this guy and not just the more visible libraries that rely so heavily on his work?”, even though the issue was obliquely raised in several places, but I did see quite a few saying, “How can we wrest this code out of this guy’s hands against his will and make multiple other people maintain it (but not me, I’m too busy) so we don’t have a single point of failure?”
Well obviously giving financial support is important, but having more than 1 maintainer is good too. Because any amount of money wouldn’t have stopped him from going to the hospital / jail, and certainly wouldn’t help if he got hit by a bus.