People Holding Up the Internet

A handful of volunteer developers maintain critical infrastructure that billions of people depend on daily, including Paul Eggert who single-handedly manages the time zone database used by 4 billion phones and most internet servers in his spare time. A BBC investigation of 23 essential software projects found that 11 are sustained by just one or two people doing unpaid maintenance work, confirming that modern digital infrastructure relies heavily on the thankless efforts of individual contributors.