[jrochkind1]

Github employees also send a lot of commits to Ruby and Rails. But probably not as many as Shoppify.

There might be one or two additional big companies that are similarly funding employees to contribute to core infrastructure in significant ways.

But not too many more than a handful, I agree. And they are carrying a lot of weight in ruby ecosystem for sure.

I feel like this era of open source in general is one of very shifting patterns of contribution for sustainability. One or a few big companies paying people to keep the thing alive is definitely one that seems to be increasing.

Perhaps since the company(ies) in question didn't originate the product(s) in this case, it doesn't feel like they "own" them exactly (not like "open source" products originated and developed by only one company where the product is their business itself -- not sure which category O'Caml fits in), but the risk in depending on only one or two companies (where the product is _not_ their actual business itself) is that if the company decides it no longer wants to make the investment, it can definitely be disastrous for the product. Shoppify just did a bunch of layoffs -- I don't think they hit the people contributing to ruby too hard, but they easily could have, except perhaps Shopify too realizes that if they stopped keeping Ruby alive it would be disastrous for their own business.