Linux & open source
The Internet Runs on Code Maintained by People You Have Never Heard Of.
The phone in your hand depends on a time zone file one UCLA lecturer updates in his spare time, a compression library written by the man who ran a Mars rover, and a shell whose entire public history is 1 person’s commits. I went through the real names, dates, and funding numbers behind the software holding up modern computing, because the gap between how much we lean on these projects and how little we pay for them is worse than the famous cartoon makes it look.