This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
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This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
SQLite is everywhere and in everything, and it is not an exaggeration that if there's an undiscovered date-based bug in SQLite the world stops on that day.
But there are many, many pieces of software like that, built and maintained by people you've never heard of who often as not are barely scraping by.
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This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
SQLite is everywhere and in everything, and it is not an exaggeration that if there's an undiscovered date-based bug in SQLite the world stops on that day.
But there are many, many pieces of software like that, built and maintained by people you've never heard of who often as not are barely scraping by.
@mhoye@cosocial.ca Mandatory XKCD
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@mhoye@cosocial.ca In fairness, the fact that one comic is so succinctly describes the problem, begs the question, why is the solution so elusive?
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@mhoye@cosocial.ca In fairness, the fact that one comic is so succinctly describes the problem, begs the question, why is the solution so elusive?
@joseph Solutions aren't elusive at all. We know how to pay for things that don't benefit any one entity in specific but benefit all of us collectively, this is where roads, sewers, clean running water and the electrical grid come from. We're just not doing that for software.
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@mhoye@cosocial.ca In fairness, the fact that one comic is so succinctly describes the problem, begs the question, why is the solution so elusive?
@joseph @mhoye
The comic is a much more rugged piece of infrastructureHandling a lot of conceptual bandwidth very succinctly, and requires almost no maintenance as it’s sustained and spread virally (without even losing its citation!)
If other solutions were as robust as that cartoon, the system would be gang-busters
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This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
SQLite is everywhere and in everything, and it is not an exaggeration that if there's an undiscovered date-based bug in SQLite the world stops on that day.
But there are many, many pieces of software like that, built and maintained by people you've never heard of who often as not are barely scraping by.
@mhoye Heh. Nevermind. This post is my answer lol.
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@joseph Solutions aren't elusive at all. We know how to pay for things that don't benefit any one entity in specific but benefit all of us collectively, this is where roads, sewers, clean running water and the electrical grid come from. We're just not doing that for software.
@mhoye@cosocial.ca I agree, but the question is, why not?
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This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
SQLite is everywhere and in everything, and it is not an exaggeration that if there's an undiscovered date-based bug in SQLite the world stops on that day.
But there are many, many pieces of software like that, built and maintained by people you've never heard of who often as not are barely scraping by.
@mhoye yeah, I remember finding that libjpeg-turbo was basically one guy on a major funding crisis back in 2023: https://icosahedron.website/@greg/111166045158418586
not only was he not getting paid but he was being pestered by bug reports from big companies (google, etc) doing unpaid support for them
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This is important: https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet
SQLite is everywhere and in everything, and it is not an exaggeration that if there's an undiscovered date-based bug in SQLite the world stops on that day.
But there are many, many pieces of software like that, built and maintained by people you've never heard of who often as not are barely scraping by.
@mhoye I'd like to mention NTP too. The ntp.org code is more likely running in infrastructure, but if it fails then a lot of stuff will break too. I met Harlan Stenn (the project manager) at a time sync conference 14y ago and it was eye-opening how much gets done with very little funding. It's good to see more support in recent years. A presentation on NTP and it's ongoing dev: https://nanog.org/events/nanog-86/content/4552/
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A anderslund@expressional.social shared this topic
