Software-infrastructure Memes

Billion-dollar companies running on libraries maintained by some legend who hasn't slept since 2019 and survives on GitHub stars instead of actual compensation. Your banking app? Probably held together by a package some developer created in their basement and forgot about. The entire internet is basically balanced on the backs of unpaid maintainers who get 47 issues opened per day asking "when will you add feature X?" Meanwhile, Fortune 500 companies are making millions using their code and the most they get is a "thanks bro" in the README acknowledgments section. The visual nails it—massive infrastructure crushing down on the tiniest foundation imaginable. And yes, those ants are probably also dealing with merge conflicts and dependency hell while holding up the entire tech ecosystem. Maybe throw them a coffee donation? Or like... an actual salary?

The entire digital world stands on the shoulders of a single C library that some guy wrote in his basement in 1998. Every streaming service, every video call, every cat video – all powered by FFmpeg, a tool held together with duct tape and caffeine. The best part? Most companies making millions from video content have no idea their empire rests on this Jenga tower of open-source code. If the three developers who actually understand the codebase ever decided to take a vacation simultaneously, Netflix would just be a spinning loading icon.