This has been observed before
https://xkcd.com/2347/
Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
41–50 of 112 posts
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#42Expat LibreSSL Linux-PAM OpenSSH re2c tzdata zlib Those are just the ones that came to mind.
Good list. Sometimes the easiest way to contribute is to just donate some money, so that the existing maintainers can continue to focus on their work. OpenBSD is the "mothership" project for both OpenSSH and LibreSSL: https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html
Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on how to donate to these projects:
- https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat
- https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam
tzdata is actually maintained by IANA:
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#43In this thread: Wildly different definitions of what "widely used" means :) Did you know tools like uname [1] and cat [2] in GNU coreutils have essentially only had two contributors in the past decade? [1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor... [2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor...
And most of what happens in those utilities is updating the copyright year numbers.
Which seems wholly unnecessary. The way I understand it, having only the starting year is sufficient.
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#44Just curious what arrangement theses people have. -do their employers recognize their effort and give hours to the side projects? -they mostly contractors so can arrange their time accordingly? -donations? -or is it mostly a hobby done out of passion?
I don't have something nearly as popular as these other projects; but if you have a popular project, a potential employer might offer work hours for it to get you as an employee.
Further, as a contributor of some now popular projects with one other maintainer, I can say that I mostly do it for fun. My current employer gives zero-fucks about it but if a new employer were to use it to woo me away, I would jump in a heartbeat.
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#45In this thread: Wildly different definitions of what "widely used" means :) Did you know tools like uname [1] and cat [2] in GNU coreutils have essentially only had two contributors in the past decade? [1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor... [2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor...
I'm actually surprised by the amount of changes in 'cat'. One would assume a program like that is already 'done'.
Starting in ~2008, the ones marked 'maint' and 'all' touch multiple files and don't appear to make substantive changes to e.g. cat. Since that categorization started, only 10 of the changes have been specific to cat.
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#46Expat LibreSSL Linux-PAM OpenSSH re2c tzdata zlib Those are just the ones that came to mind.
Good list. Sometimes the easiest way to contribute is to just donate some money, so that the existing maintainers can continue to focus on their work. OpenBSD is the "mothership" project for both OpenSSH and LibreSSL: https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on how to donate to these projects: - https://re2c.org - https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat - https://github.com/li…
I didn't realize the IANA contributed debian packages and rpms. /s
They maintain the list, but someone has to package it.
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#47All the better ones. The more maintainers, the quality goes down. Down to total destruction
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised to hear this, any more info?
Its wrong, or at least not my definition of few people. https://thephp.foundation/structure/ "Core Developers The PHP Foundation contracts 10 full-time and part-time engineers to maintain and develop the PHP language."
Not to mention all the volunteers.
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#49- curl: Daniel Stenberg et al. - https://github.com/orgs/curl/people - Lua (programming language): team of 3 - https://www.lua.org/authors.html - openssl: 15 people - https://github.com/orgs/openssl/people maybe also: sqlite, vim, nginx, redis
> maybe also: sqlite [...]
SQLite won't accept contributions from outside the core team; joining the core team is an involved process, as they're taking extreme measures to ensure it will continue to be recognised as a work in public domain in as many jurisdictions as humanly possible. You can still support the project by paying them for their work (or by getting your employer to do so):
Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?
#50brew
Homebrew has a healthy amount of maintainers. Some people leave as priorities change but others join.