You could have a "Foundation" funded by corporate stakeholders. It doesn't even have to have a scope as broad as all open source software; it could be a "Linux Foundation". Google and Amazon and Netflix and whomever else uses Linux would be members of this Foundation on some kind of tiered plan, and their membership fees would go to maintaining critical, Linux-adjacent software.
While I’m not specifically opposed to this, you have to be careful about the edge cases and how they end up being rated. SQLite is a great example for the variables you started with:
> Size of team
3, with no outside contributions accepted into the core.
> The language
C
Those two, presumably, would end up being heavily weighted towards having a low score.
> Testing methodology
Here they’d probably get some points back based on their ~10:1 test lines vs code ratio.
Just because the kidz doan' like it, does not mean it's bad.
1 is the loneliest number (have to be an old fart to get that), but big teams can be a problem (Camel is a horse designed by committee). I'd say the experience and track record of the principals are a big factor (see "Linux" and "Git").
i think you have it backwards. giant teams == big risks, esp. if there isn`t strict and formal processes to eval the new contributors
3 people are easy to evaluate, have been on the project forever, and presumably know what they`re doing.
C shouldn`t be a problem per se -- again, it`s been around a lot, and while it makes it easy to bork pointers, it`s not a meme language that we don`t know much about
There could be a lot of variables to the rating, like the size of the team, the language, the testing methodology, etc.
The board would need to be supported by end-users, and big steps would need to be taken to ensure true independence.
It would have to be carefully done, though, and likely immensely unpopular with the HN crowd.