As has been discussed in detail in Nadia Eghbal’s Roads and Bridges, the CZI EOSS program announcement, and in the NumFocus sustainability program goals, much of the critical software that science and industry are built on is maintained by a primarily volunteer community. While this has worked, it is not sustainable in the long term for the health of many projects or their contributors.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.scientific-python.org/matplotlib/matplotlib-rsef