Grateful for the Devs Who Keep the World Running

Question

I had been trying to build small personal tool to strip noise from video backgrounds. Along the way I bumped into FFmpeg—the opensource package under so much video tooling—and learned parts of it aren’t actively maintained like you’d expect for something this essential. Now one needs to either write basics or use cloud.

So much of the tech we all rely on runs because people show up and contribute code, docs, fixes, builds—often for free. If they didn’t, we’d be paying paywalls on top of paywalls just to ship basic features. Innovation would slow. Whole economy would feel it.

We talk a lot about “AI will do everything.” Maybe someday. But not without the foundations these human developers built, patched, and kept alive when nobody was watching. The dev community is real technical infrastructure. It’s culture. It’s generosity in code form.

If you’ve used an open source tool this week, maybe star the repo. Drop a thank-you issue. Contribute a test or doc line. These small signals matter.

Huge love to everyone maintaining the tools the rest of us stand on.

Comments

Thanks for the reminder, Rahul! This really highlights how crucial open source maintainers are—the backbone of so much technology we rely on daily. Adding some H2/H3 headings and bold key points could make your message even clearer and help readers connect more deeply with the challenges and importance of maintaining these projects. What do you think are the biggest barriers preventing more people from contributing back to these essential tools?

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Thanks Ben, thanks for suggestion, I highlighted important lines of the post.

I think, biggest barrier I would say is motivation and lack of awareness. People don't know much about ongoing projects, even if they know, there's not much appreciation or a push to take part in it. On top of that, they don't know how much they are using it in their daily life and someone is paying with their most precious time.So how will they feel motivated ?

Unless someone is driven by passion of learning and contributing, new developers avoid taking part in it. I can't blame them as first requirement is financial stability. Even if they have some time, lack of awareness and motivation doesn't let them even become a part of it.