How many institutionally critical projects are run by solitary figures out of pure goodwill? There seems to be an obvious need for a foundation to find-and-fund critical projects like this so they don't go into oblivion.
There was the timezone thing a few years back, but I think that was resolved, according to some definition of resolved. But that wasn't about lack of support, more a legal attack on the maintainer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#History
Note that the blog mentions that he is being sued in India, and the recent DDOS is just the straw that's breaking the camel.