"he would love to mentor new maintainers for libxml2, ""but there simply aren't any candidates""

I know some folks from China, Russia, and North Korea who would love to become maintainers. No pay needed. I recommend Jia Tan - he has vast experience maintaining opensource software.

If you think you need libxml2, think again. XML is a complex beast. Do you really need all those features? Maybe a much smaller, more easily maintained library would suit your needs while performing better at the same time!

For instance, consuming XML and creating it are two very different use cases. Zooming into consuming it, perhaps your input data has more guarantees than libxml2 assumes, such as the nonexistence of meta definition tags.

Related gitlab comment: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/issues/976#note_253... .

Related Libxml2's "no security embargoes" policy (298 points, 84 days ago, 270 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44381093

Nick Wellnhofer is stepping away from libxml2 after a decade of unpaid maintenance. He’s forking it under the AGPL, but that will probably scare off most corporate users.

Meanwhile libxml2 is still everywhere. Without someone with real backing, a core piece of infrastructure is about to go unmaintained.

Once again, the open-source funding problem is laid bare: the internet runs on the unpaid evenings of a few people until they burn out (add relevant reference from XKCD, obviously).

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Too bad gnome foundation does not get any money. They are completely broke, like Mozilla!