As cloud-native computing becomes more common, open source project maintainers remain a core piece of the developing ecosystem, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Executive Director Priyanka Sharma said during a keynote address at this week's KubeCon North America 2022.

"Recent history tells us that in times of financial turmoil, open source usage soars," Sharma said, citing the foundation's more than 176,000 global contributors.

"Our resilience through what has been really a trying time for the world is translating into economic impact," she said. According to a recent Gartner report, CFOs will likely double down on digital transformation and increase IT funding this year "despite the economic conditions," she noted.

The market research firm also predicts cloud-native platforms will be the foundation of more than 95% of new digital initiatives, representing a significant increase from 40% in 2021. "Talk about growth," Sharma said.

Sharma also highlighted that growth's extension to the telecom space, citing CNCF telco partners that are cloud-native network function certified. "That number keeps growing, and again, cloud native keeps proliferating," she said.

To that point, it's the CNCF project maintainers who carry the load of this increased interest. "These people are one in a million, and they shape the past, present, and future of cloud native," she touted.

CNCF defines project maintainers as individuals who take on a core role in the foundation's projects by maintaining code, documentation, or policy. The characteristic setting maintainers apart from the larger pool of contributors is decision-making. In this way, maintainers "are deciding the future of the project," Sharma explained.

The roughly 1,000 maintainers in the CNCF community make decisions that affect and support more than 7 million cloud-native developers globally. "If you really think about it, it's 1,000 people supporting millions. Maintainers are holding up the cloud-native ecosystem," she said.

Sharma also highlighted major enterprises that have embraced cloud-native.

Chinese hyperscaler Alibaba touts cloud native as one of its four key areas of open source investment, and the cloud provider is setting up new domain vice chairs to manage those investments.

In a similar vein, aerospace company Boeing plans to double its monthly contributors to open source projects next year, and SUSE Rancher plans to quadruple the amount of developers supporting upstream commitments.

"They've got your back, and they're committed to upstream commit contributions and ensuring the future of open source. Go talk to these companies," Sharma urged maintainers.