[$] "Critical" projects and volunteer maintainers
Over the last five decades or so, free and open-source software (FOSS) hasgone from an almost unknown quantity available to only the most technically savvy to underpinning muchof the infrastructure we rely on today. Much like software itself, FOSS is"eating the world". But that has changed-is changing-the role of themaintainers of all of that code; when "critical" infrastructure uses codefrom a FOSS project, suddenly, and perhaps without warning, that codeitself becomes critical. But many maintainers of that software arevolunteers who did not set out to become beholden to the needs of largecompanies and organizations when they released their code, they were justscratching their itch-now lots of others are clamoring for theirs to bescratched as well.