Show this picture to anyone who has worked in tech a long time….
…and they will likely nod vigorously in agreement. I am sure most people believe otherwise. Until last week.
Last week we all saw PHP sites go down all over the world. (Some estimates that 70% of all websites are PHP based.) All those sites depended largely on the efforts of one man to create a fix that allowed those sites to come back on line. One man! (The Atlantic has a piece on that man, here: The Man Who Saved the Internet Yesterday – The Atlantic).
Now you might think: oh that’s just PHP. If so, then read this: The people holding up the internet. As you can see after reading that piece, the Internet and other digital infrastructure depends a lot on the efforts of a few good men mainly working for free.
P.S. More on the PHP problem from the New York Times, here. You can find the picture, here.
