The main issue is that this attack shows how a relatively unknown component, as part of a much larger and more critical infrastructure, is susceptible to pressure as a result of "this is a hobby project, lend a hand".
At what point do these components become seen as a utility and in some way adopted into a more mainline, secure, well-funded approach to maintenance? That maintenance can, and probably should, happen in the open, but with the requisite level of scrutiny and oversight worthy of a critical component.
We got very lucky, _this time_.
why just this one? do we collectively have the memory of a gold fish? just recently, log4j had a similar blast radius. is it because one was seemingly malicious that the other doesn't count?
This vulnerability, had all gone to the attackers plan, would have been present on the major distros next major releases through a key infrastructure component which would have been installed far more widely, IMO.
Another major difference is that Log4J is already part of the Apache Foundation, which means it should have greater oversight/security maintenance anyway, while this is an attack against a solo developer.
It's definitely not to downplay the severity of the Log4J incident, by any means. But they are decidedly different.
I would bet that some of these projects like xz would show enormousness benefits from one paid person working on it 1/4 time, leaving room for a couple more projects per dev. Additionally, a couple places providing relatively minor grants would probably help a dev buy back some of their time so the can work on their project some other time then 'after the kids are in bed'
Look at stuff getting signed with MS keys, hardware vendors with possible backdoors.
Social engineering is social engineering and it can happen anywhere no matter the profit motivation or lack there of.
Money interest in software won't save you any more than Foss.