"Critical" projects and volunteer maintainers

Maybe the Linux Foundation should set up a trade association. If I have a bunch of important dependencies, I sponsor a developer in the association - preferably for one of things that's important to me.

Other companies do the same thing.

But the deal is, if I have a problem with another project, I talk to my developer. Hopefully the developer of the other project is also part of the association, and they fix my problem for me.

You won't then need that many companies involved and - certainly for companies and coders that join - the companies get good support and the coders eat :-)

Cheers,
Wol