Comment by coldtea

>Very few could afford even to hire the more than 200 (1999: 600, 2000: 800) people who have contributed to fetchmail!

I'm willing to bet those "200" people are 1-3 core contributors and 197-199 people who once fixed some bug and have like 2 commits in the whole codebase, or changed a comment's message.

Also "Fetchmail" as some kind of high bar? Commercial companies have produced software with 10 to 100x the scope and user base (and quality). Including back then.