The people holding up the internet

tl;dr: it’s about the timezone database (edit: among other projects) which is “maintained by a group of volunteers. Originally founded by Arthur David Olson, the project is now led by Paul Eggert and Tim Parenti.”

I know that this usually comes down to one person doing a lion’s share of the work. This applies to so many FOSS pojects, especially when their impact bleeds over into the non-FOSS world (and by now I think we can include Android in that). Yet the world of FOSS has never broken down even when one of these “one person"s quits. We know. But it might be scawy for people who live in proprietary la-la-land.

Don’t get me wrong, this is important. But I find the article with all its dark javascript magic a little hyperbolic, sensationalist. Even the "plain" reading page is. Gigantic headers, large numbers etc.

I will also add that the tz database isn’t huge, and it isn’t prone to constant change. It makes for great numbers but the whole issue is pretty pedestrian if you look a little closer.

How many parts of closed systems that many people rely on are maintained by only 1 person (who would promptly be replaced by corporate if they quit)? I guess we just don’t have so much data on that because - surprise - they’re not Open.

I could’ve written a similar article, but I would have written it differently.

edit: I stand corrected on the crossed-out bit.
I’ll also state very clearly that I agree with the topic, just not the way it is presented.
And that I was fully aware that this is not only about the TZ databse when I wrote this.

When I scrolled through only the first bit was about tzdb, it also talked about bash, libxml, libz, curl, TrueType, Harfbuzz, SQLite, and I think more.

Not sure why your copy only has the first section.

I think you misunderstood (or didn’t fully read) my comment.