There are roughly 70 code contributors to the logstash project as of today. Many more exist as helpful folks on IRC and the mailling list. Others post awesome bug reports and feature requests. The community is simply awesome.
I've been working on logstash for about 2 years. All as a hobby - all part-time. About 70% of the current content (commits, 'git blame' lines, etc) are by me.
Unfortunately, I've never used logstash in production. (Embarrassing, I know!)
I'm embarrassed to answer user questions like "How do I optimize elasticsearch's storage?" with "Sorry, I've never used elasticsearch outside of my laptop."
It's bullshit, really. That changes now.
Right now, the big competition is Splunk, and at present logstash makes a better value proposition only (based on discussions with folks who have experience with both). It lacks many features (though surpassing in other areas).
In 3-5 years, I want logstash to dominate everything in the logging space not simply by cost, but in form and function.
To get to that point, I need a faster feedback cycle as well as strong incentive to improve the project. To that end...
I'm looking for somewhere that does billions of events per day, would benefit from logstash, and would benefit from investing in engineering time in it. I need this to gather production experience with logstash for the purposes of fast feedback, incentive to code, and performance growth.
Choosing logstash and hiring one or two full-time engineers is cheaper (and actually provides increasing ROI) than a Splunk license.
We have an environment that fits the bill and has lots of interesting projects cooking that could greatly benefit from a comprehensive logging system that includes logstash. Splunk told us that we can't afford them, Flume isn't quite our cup of tea, would you be interested in having a chat with us?