[mulmen]

It's an interesting point. A significant number of Apache (big data) projects do indeed seem to be "in the attic"[1]. But they have high profile projects that are well maintained. AirBnB created Airflow then donated it to Apache. Do they still use it internally and contribute to Apache Airflow? Do other companies contribute?

Spark is central to Databricks, the company started by the original creator of Spark.

So at least for a couple high-profile Apache projects there are for-profit organizations with an interest in furthering development.

I assume Databricks pays devs to contribute to Spark, I actually don't know.

So maybe Apache Firefox with a Mozilla corporate sponsor isn't such a terrible idea. Although again, I have no idea what the commercial motivation would be behind supporting Firefox development.

[1]: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?category#big-data