by Dan Moren

The one guy who manages most of PHP distribution is a volunteer, of course

As someone who both maintains their own Linux server and dabbles in web development¹, I’d always noticed the update repository for PHP was surprisingly just called ppa:ondrej/php and wondered why exactly that was.

Turns out it’s named for Ondřej Surý the one (largely) unpaid volunteer who maintains it. As if he wasn’t load-bearing enough, he became even more significant the other day when a massive PHP vulnerability was uncovered.

The Atlantic‘s Charlie Warzel interviewed Surý about the situation, and he points out some hard truths:

Surý: When I started doing open-source, it was fun. And it kind of still is. But the environment has shifted. Open-source sometimes feels like exploitation. What I would like to see is to find a new model where people working on open-source would be awarded for their work and the hours and hours they put into it from the people who most benefit from their work. I would like companies to realize that this is exploitation. Any exploitation is not sustainable. And it will end up badly if this continues, because the people doing the open-source will stop being motivated to actually do anything in the end.

A reminder, as that XKCD comic linked above so saliently illustrates, that the massive profit-seeking ventures of the Internet are all too often built on the backs of unpaid labor.