[perlgeek]

A related question I've asked myself a few times already, with no good answer yet: is it good for the long-term health of an OSS project if it has sponsored developer(s) from a single company?

If Cairo didn't have that support, it might have fizzled out much earlier. Or a more heterogeneous community might have emerged, which would be more resilient to a single sponsor dropping out.

If anybody has data (not just anecdotes) regarding this question, I would be very grateful!

[carschno]

> is it good for the long-term health of an OSS project if it has sponsored developer(s) from a single company?

Surely, the answer is "no" in absolute terms. In relative terms, however, the answer is "better than none" most of the time.

[kevincox]

Having anything you care about being in a single failure domain is a bad idea.

- A single company is a bad idea. - A single maintainer is a bad idea. - Maintainers from a single country is a bad idea.

So yes, having all of your maintainers in one company is bad for long-term health.

But 1 is better than 0!