The Plight of a Single Maintainer: The curl Project's Struggle

Daniel Stenberg, the sole full-time maintainer of the widely used curl project, shared his struggles at the Open Source Summit Europe. Despite curl's massive impact (used in over a billion devices), the project faces challenges from companies leveraging it without contributing, malicious emails, AI-driven DDoS attacks, and the sheer volume of maintenance tasks. While he receives some heartwarming thank-you notes, the burden of maintaining curl is immense, highlighting the difficulties faced by many open-source maintainers working without adequate support.