tilfluktsrom/STANDING_ON_SHOULDERS.md

Standing on Shoulders

How many people made this app possible?

Tilfluktsrom is a small Android app — about 900 source files — that helps Norwegians find their nearest public shelter in an emergency. One person built it in under a day. But that was only possible because of the accumulated work of roughly 119,000 people, spanning decades, countries, and disciplines.

This document traces the human effort behind every layer of the stack, with sources for each estimate.

pie title People behind each layer
    "Map data (OSM)" : 50000
    "Linux kernel" : 20000
    "Physical infrastructure" : 10500
    "Build tools & dev infra" : 6700
    "AI-assisted development" : 6000
    "Shelter data & builders" : 6000
    "Internet & standards" : 5250
    "OS & runtimes (excl. Linux)" : 3800
    "Libraries (Android)" : 2100
    "Libraries (PWA)" : 1750
    "Hosting & distribution" : 5700
    "Programming languages" : 1600

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Layer 0: Physical Infrastructure — GPS & Sensors (~10,500 people)

Component	Role	Est. people	Source
GPS constellation	31 satellites, maintained by US Space Force	~5,000	Industry estimate; GPS.gov
Magnetometer/compass sensors	Enable the direction arrow to point at shelters	~500	Industry estimate
ARM architecture	The CPU instruction set running every Android device	~5,000	Arm had 8,330 employees in 2025; ~5,000 estimated over the architecture's 40-year history

Before a single line of code runs, hardware designed by tens of thousands of engineers must be in orbit, in your pocket, and on the circuit board.

Layer 1: Internet & Standards (~5,250 people)

Component	Role	Est. people	Source
TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS	The protocols that carry shelter data from server to phone	~5,000	Cumulative IETF/W3C contributors over decades
GeoJSON specification	The format the shelter data is published in (IETF RFC 7946)	~50	RFC 7946 authors + WG
EPSG / coordinate reference systems	The math behind UTM33N → WGS84 coordinate conversion	~200	IOGP Geomatics Committee

Layer 2: Operating Systems & Runtimes (~23,800 people)

Component	Role	Est. people	Source
Linux kernel	Foundation of Android	~20,000	Linux Foundation: ~20,000+ unique contributors since 2005
Android (AOSP)	Mobile OS, incl. ART runtime	~2,000	ResearchGate study: ~1,563 contributors; likely higher now
OpenJDK	The Java runtime Kotlin compiles to	~1,800	GitHub: ~1,779 contributors

Layer 3: Programming Languages (~1,600 people)

Language	Origin	Contributors	Source
Kotlin	JetBrains + community	~765	GitHub: JetBrains/kotlin
TypeScript	Microsoft + community (for the PWA)	~823	GitHub: microsoft/TypeScript

Layer 4: Build Tools & Dev Infrastructure (~6,700 people)

Tool	Role	Contributors	Source
Gradle	Build automation	~869	GitHub: gradle/gradle
Android Gradle Plugin	Android-specific build pipeline	~200	Google internal; estimate
KSP (Kotlin Symbol Processing)	Code generation for Room database	~100	Estimate based on GitHub: google/ksp
R8 / ProGuard	Release minification and optimization	~100	Estimate
Vite	PWA bundler	~1,100	GitHub: vitejs/vite
Bun	Package manager and JS runtime	~733	GitHub: oven-sh/bun
Git	Version control	~1,820	GitHub: git/git
Android Studio / IntelliJ	IDE	~1,500	Estimate; JetBrains + Google
Maven Central, Google Maven, npm	Package registry infrastructure	~300	Estimate

Layer 5: Libraries — Android App (~2,100 people)

Library	What it does	Contributors	Source
AndroidX (Core, AppCompat, Room, WorkManager, etc.)	UI, architecture, database, scheduling	~1,000	GitHub: androidx/androidx monorepo
Material Design Components	Visual design language and components	~199	GitHub: material-components-android
Kotlinx Coroutines	Async data loading without blocking the UI	~308	GitHub: Kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines
OkHttp	Downloads the GeoJSON ZIP from Geonorge	~287	GitHub: square/okhttp
OSMDroid	Offline OpenStreetMap rendering	~105	GitHub: osmdroid/osmdroid
Play Services Location	FusedLocationProvider for precise GPS	~200	Google internal; estimate
SQLite	The embedded database engine	~4	sqlite.org/crew.html — the most deployed database in the world, maintained by 3–4 people

Layer 6: Libraries — PWA (~1,750 people)

Library	Role	Contributors	Source
Leaflet	Interactive web maps (created in Ukraine)	~865	GitHub: Leaflet/Leaflet
leaflet.offline	Offline tile caching	~20	Estimate based on GitHub
idb	IndexedDB wrapper for offline storage	~30	Estimate based on GitHub
vite-plugin-pwa	Service worker and Workbox integration	~100	Estimate based on GitHub
Vitest	Test framework	~718	GitHub: vitest-dev/vitest

Layer 7: Data — The Content That Makes It Useful (~56,000 people)

Source	Role	Est. people	Source link
OpenStreetMap	Global map data	~50,000	~2.25M have ever edited; ~50,000 active monthly
Kartverket / Geonorge	Norwegian Mapping Authority; national geodata infrastructure	~800	kartverket.no
DSB	Created and maintains the public shelter registry	~200	dsb.no
The shelter builders	Construction, engineering, civil defense planning since the Cold War	~5,000	Estimate based on ~556 shelters built 1950s–80s

The app's data exists because of Cold War civil defense planning. The shelters were built in the 1950s–80s, digitized by DSB, published via Geonorge's open data mandate — a chain of decisions spanning 70 years that now fits in a 320 KB GeoJSON file.

Layer 8: AI-Assisted Development (~6,000 people)

Component	Role	Est. people	Source
Anthropic / Claude	Researchers, engineers, safety team	~1,000	anthropic.com
ML research lineage	Transformers, attention, RLHF, scaling laws — across academia & industry	~5,000	Estimate across all contributing institutions
Training data	The collective written output of humanity	incalculable

Layer 9: Hosting & Distribution (~5,700 people)

Component	Role	Contributors	Source
Forgejo / Gitea	Hosts this project at kode.naiv.no; Forgejo forked from Gitea in 2022	~800	Forgejo: ~230 contributors; Gitea: go-gitea/gitea
GitHub	Mirror repo + hosts nearly all upstream dependencies	~3,000	~5,000 employees, ~50% engineers
F-Droid	Open-source app store infrastructure and review	~150	GitLab: fdroid; estimate
Fastlane	Metadata and screenshot tooling	~1,524	GitHub: fastlane/fastlane

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Summary

Layer	People
Physical infrastructure (GPS, ARM, sensors)	~10,500
Internet & standards	~5,250
Operating systems & runtimes	~23,800
Programming languages	~1,600
Build tools & dev infrastructure	~6,700
Direct libraries (Android)	~2,100
Direct libraries (PWA)	~1,750
Data (maps, shelters, geodesy)	~56,000
AI-assisted development	~6,000
Hosting & distribution	~5,700
Conservative total	~119,000

This is conservative. It excludes:

• The millions of OSM mappers globally whose edits feed the tile rendering pipeline
• Hardware manufacturing (semiconductor fabs, device assembly — millions of workers)
• The educators who taught all these people their craft
• The civil defense planners who decided Norway needed public shelters
• The mathematicians behind Haversine, UTM projections, and geodesy going back centuries

Including OpenStreetMap's full contributor base and hardware, the number crosses 2 million easily.

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Notable details

• SQLite — the most widely deployed database engine in the world (in every phone, browser, and operating system) — is maintained by 3–4 people. It powers every shelter lookup in this app.

• Leaflet — the JavaScript mapping library used by the PWA — was created by Volodymyr Agafonkin in Kyiv, Ukraine. An emergency shelter app built with a mapping library from a country at war.

• OpenStreetMap has ~10 million registered accounts, but only ~50,000 are active in any given month. The map tiles this app displays are the work of a dedicated minority.

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Perspective

For every line of application code, roughly 119,000 people made the tools, data, and infrastructure that line depends on. No single company, country, or organization could have built this stack alone. Linux (Finland → global), Kotlin (Czech Republic/Russia → JetBrains), OSM (UK → global), GPS (US military → civilian), Leaflet (Ukraine), SQLite (US, public domain) — this emergency app is a product of genuine global cooperation.

The fact that one person can build a working, offline-capable emergency app in under a day is arguably one of the most remarkable expressions of accumulated human cooperation — and almost none of it was coordinated by any central authority.