Maintaining What Millions Depend On
Notes from five years maintaining a library you've almost certainly shipped to production — without ever knowing my name.
By Maya Patel12 min read
There's a particular loneliness to maintaining infrastructure. The better you do it, the less anyone notices. Success is the absence of an incident.
I inherited the project from a maintainer who burned out quietly. I almost did the same. What saved me wasn't a sponsorship deal or a foundation — though both helped. It was learning to say no in public, and to mean it.
Open source runs on a generosity that the rest of the industry takes for granted. If you've built a career on top of someone's weekend project, the least you can do is learn their name.