amusing stat: in #curl 8.13.0 we have "surviving" code lines from 622 authors. (who has at least one production code line with their name in git blame)
That's 11 *fewer* than in the previous release.
In fact, we peaked at 636 unique authors in version 8.10.1 and it has gone down since.
No, I don't have any conclusion to make based on this. It's just variations over time.