This isn't anything new and I feel the same way about Deno. We can argue about exactly how much trouble any runtime is in today vs yesterday vs tomorrow but VC funding of a javascript runtime feels inherently unstable to me.

The key question is how much unique tooling you're relying on. If you can switch to Node tomorrow, great. If you can't, make sure you have a contingency plan.

The problem is this.

If not VC funding, then what? Volunteer work? So other people can make money off it?

Our industry has no answer how to fund infrastructure.

You've got FAANG companies using open source projects built by volunteers and doing meagre grants every once in a while, not nearly enough to pay a SWE salary. A smattering of hard to get grants from NLnet, etc. And then places like Anthropic or Grok or OpenAI "buying" open source teams to pull them inside, which inevitably leads to drama.

I don't know what the answer is, but there's a serious issue here. Similar situations in the 80s were why the FSF was founded and the GPL established. (Not to fund, but to protect the rights of authors and users)