One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the number of available, open source packages out there. What is more surprising to me is there seem to be people who keep track of a large number of them. And, what is most surprising to me is that rigging a handful or more of them in a single application ever works.

I suppose part of my amazement comes from never having worked in one specific area. I can image that would motivate someone to seek tools that make life easier. I also suppose the natural desire of most competent programmers is to leverage technology in order to make life easier. So, if there is a perceived need, then a solution will be built. But the biggest question I have considering that is why do the solutions seem so small? I mean so much so that you could depend on several packages for a web application and not really even know what some of them do exactly.

I realize that several of these projects were started by a small group, and they are generally community developed and maintained for little or no compensation. But, if there really is a need, then why not package some of them together to make a more robust solution that takes less effort to use since the larger package should all play nice together, and breaking changes would theoretically be handled? I know the answer to this question but it still surprises me that if there are useful solutions, and demand for them, that more consolidated solutions do not emerge. Then again, maybe they do, exactly as they should.