Richard Hipp is the creator of SQLite, one of (if not, the) most deployed pieces of software ever created. In this interview he describes why he initially created it and how it evolved over the years.
As an open source maintainer myself, I’m struck by how he incorporated enhancements for companies as they asked for them. In my experience many enhancements companies ask for are difficult to incorporate- they’re either too narrowly focused to be generally useful to the user base, or force the project to take on significant added complexity. It’s impressive how Richard has been able to intelligently incorporate enhancement requests from external stakeholders for so many years.