The catastrophic failures of Heartbleed, Log4Shell, and the XZ Utils backdoor were not isolated incidents. They were warning shots.

They were symptoms of a much deeper and more dangerous crisis: our digital world is built on the unrecognised, uncompensated, and unsustainable labour of a handful of "accidental gatekeepers". The “free” and open-source software that powers our governments, banks, and critical national infrastructure isn’t free, it’s running on a hidden debt of human burnout that is about to come due.

In The Value Chasm, you will discover the profound market failure at the heart of our digital commons, a chasm between the immense value created by volunteer maintainers and the negligible value they capture. This is the digital “Tragedy of the Commons” on a planetary scale, fuelled by corporate free-riding and government neglect, creating a systemic risk that threatens our most essential services. This isn't just about code; it's about the burnout, isolation, and exploitation of the human infrastructure holding our world together.

Inside, you will learn:

• The ‘Bus Factor of One’: Why a shocking number of critical software projects are just one person away from collapse, and how to identify this existential risk in your own systems.

• The True Cost of “Free”: A searing analysis of the market failures and economic imbalances that allow multi-trillion-pound industries to be built on the back of a global volunteer workforce.

• A National Security Imperative: A clear-eyed look at how brittle software supply chains have become a primary vector for espionage and a direct threat to sovereign capability.

• A Practical Audit Framework for Leaders: A step-by-step guide for CTOs, CISOs, and policymakers to map their dependencies, quantify their liabilities in real financial terms, and create an actionable mitigation plan.

• Forging a Sustainable Future: A concrete blueprint for a new social contract, detailing how corporations, governments, and foundations can move from passive consumption to active stewardship, reinforcing our foundations before they crumble.

This is essential reading for leaders in technology and government, including CTOs, CISOs, engineers, and policymakers, as well as investors performing technical due diligence.

The Value Chasm is more than a warning; it is a guide to fundamentally rethinking our relationship with the technology that defines our age. It is time to stop ignoring the human cost of our digital world and start paying our dues.