Reflecting the enormous effectiveness of free markets in the software space. If there was a strong regulatory system around software development it might cost orders of magnitude more to run a modern OS.
why though? number of maintainers is a function of how much work is needed now rather than how important the project is ? I would imagine sudo isn't getting that much commits/changes now. What would 10 maintainers do on sudo ?
The problem with open source like this is that it’s too difficult to work on, and if you start studying just to be able to work on it, it’s hard to get noticed. Most core open-source projects start with optimization and are extremely difficult. But would people with that level of skill really dislike being noticed?
What scares me is the new generation are mostly tech illiterate just like boomers, only millennials and some gen x are lifting the tech world, now add AI to the mix and how it’s making newer gen are even dumber, the future is bleak.
SQLite has a list of sponsors right on the homepage https://www.sqlite.org/
Do people who publish this stuff read this and think "this LLMism sounds good to me"?
* https://xkcd.com/2347/