[albinofrenchy]

Linux has a giant user base, a giant installation base, and a giant pool of talented devs willing to take on unpaid work.

If this is an indictment of anything, it's an indictment of the entire NPM ecosystem -- it's been the wild wild west for years; haphazardly using whatever NPM install gives you is baked into the culture.

Sure, Dominic is an active participant in that culture but it seems to me that it is impossible to have a largely unmoderated volunteer system with as many packages are actively used without things like this happening.

Keep in mind, this is a case where the system worked, more or less -- an observant user caught the issue, and made a public issue of it. Who knows how many packages have slipped by like this?

[Matthias247]

> Linux has a giant user base, a giant installation base, and a giant pool of talented devs willing to take on unpaid work.

And also important: It even has a giant number of paid maintainers, for who this is their main job.

For those the incentive to continuously maintain things is different than for someone who gets nothing expect more work out of it.

[newnewpdro]

> Linux has a giant user base, a giant installation base, and a giant pool of talented devs willing to take on unpaid work.

Linux didn't always have a giant user base, and it wouldn't have gotten there without strong leadership having a sense of pride and responsibility.

[underwater]

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things)."

[jolmg]

I'm curious if anyone knows how it really has developed. Has anyone documented the history? Do I understand correctly that right now it's a hierarchy with Linus at the top and levels of "Lieutenants" managing increasingly more detailed levels of subsystems. How was development organized before? Are the developers that are paid mostly on the top or the bottom of the hierarchy? Are the proportions of paid developers very distributed among different companies or does a major portion of them belong to one company?