[bennythomsson]

Building a road is usually very similar to building another road.

Building ffmpeg is very different from an SSL lib. They need different tradeoffs, design strategies, domain knowledge, etc. And doing them properly is really really hard. A lot of software out there sucks, in part because there is more focus on marketing than on correctness and reliability.

If roads had the same quality as software then traffic deaths would be an order of magnitude higher.

Try working on a library used in tech that your life depends on and you might re-consider your road metaphor.

[RamblingCTO]

I've been a core maintainer of several (machine learning) libraries. It's a communal effort of people who care enough about these things. They come together because they need it, it's basic infrastructure so to speak.

> Building a road is usually very similar to building another road.

It's a similar process, but so is building software. That's entirely besides my point though, which you seem to have missed entirely.