One Maintainer, Eighty Million Downloads: The Reality of Open Source Infrastructure

Interview with a Maintainer

I maintain libcapstan, a foundational protocol used by millions, mostly alone. While AI agents flood my repository with polite but often useless pull requests, the real bottleneck remains human review. I navigate automated security scanners that get me banned for testing exploits and vendors who monetize my own patches. The ecosystem is shifting, but the responsibility for critical infrastructure still rests on a few tired shoulders.