Who pays for the internet's plumbing? The open-source funding problem

A handful of unpaid maintainers keep critical infrastructure running. What happens when they stop? Recent incidents involving widely-used packages have put a spotlight on how much of the software world rests on projects maintained by one or two people in their spare time.

New funding models — from corporate sponsorship pools to usage-based micropayments — are being tested, but none has yet solved the core mismatch: the packages everyone depends on are rarely the ones anyone is excited to fund.