What motivates Open Source developers: Exploring the impact of recognition, reputation, and rewards

For many outside of the IT world, the concept of contributing to open-source software seems like a remarkable psychological phenomenon, as many of the contributors do it by their own free will and are quite often unpaid for it. The thought of contributing to something that requires a good amount of time without getting a dime for their work can be hard to fully understand.

What motivates Open Source developers

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However, for developers especially, contributing to open-source software provides many valuable advantages and opens doors to a number of highly lucrative and rewarding opportunities, and there are not too many other industries that can boast the massive number of global contributions like the open-source community can.

This desire to contribute can also resonate on a business level. If a business owner or company is using a piece of open-source software and would like to make some changes or add new features to meet a certain business need, then this is also a real possibility. The result is a win-win situation, as the business gets a new feature (either by developing it themselves or suggesting it to the core team) and the software also receives a new feature that can often be utilized by other users.

Here at Clearcode, our development teams regular utilize open-source software in their projects due to the many benefits it offers. We consider ourselves part of the OSS community, therefore we contribute to it. Learn more about our contributions to open-source software by clicking here.

Open source software (OSS) is a pillar in the programming community, with hundreds of thousands of projects being actively worked on by programmers of all specialties and skill levels. The practice of developing OSS challenges traditional assumptions about how markets work. Instead of being driven by profit, OSS programmers offer their time and talent to projects without expectations of a big payoff. Straightforward explanations for the open source movement have been hard to come by, but groups of experts have investigated the motivations of open source programmers and why they choose to work for free. Based on their research, it seems that there are a variety of internal factors driving the popularity of OSS.

For software to be considered open source, its source code must be available to everyone, with any modifications users make to it turned back to the community. Though details vary by license adopted, some of the key criteria included in The Open Source Definition are:

What makes open source software unique is that users see the code itself and can fix it or identify areas for improvement. And the programming community at large sees the value in open source programmers and their contribution. For example, according to Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, in The Open Source Movement: Key Research Questions, project coordinators often list frequent contributors on project servers and contributors have easy access to venture capital (after all, former open source programmers started Sun and Netscape). These are some of the reasons why Lerner and Tirole suggest that these programmers are motivated by the peer recognition they receive; these individuals are highly valued within their professional landscape.

Experts Jurgen Bitzer, Wolfram Schrettl and Philipp Schröder identified three major reasons why programmers work in OSS: a need for a particular software solution, for fun or as part of gift culture, or for social standing. Founders start OSS projects because they are dissatisfied with existing software solutions or the software they require does not exist yet. In these cases, the programmer directly benefits from development. Rather than choosing a partial solution to a software problem or paying someone else to develop one, founders start an OSS project on their own. For some open source developers, the process is viewed as a hobby of sorts.

In general, those working on OSS projects as students or as a hobby are the most internally motivated, Hars and Ou report. Programmers who are salaried or contracted, on the other hand, want to sell related products and services, market themselves or fulfill their own software needs. This combination of internal and external motivating factors makes the open source movement dynamic and increasingly versatile in terms of project type and programming style.

Linux, Drupal and Mozilla are only a few examples of successful open source projects. Despite this there are still a lot of people in the industry who have reservations against open source. The general concern of most of these sceptics is why would anyone choose to work for free?

Working open source with Drupal allows us to innovate quicker and receive important feedback and input from the Drupal community, using existing open source tools. Being involved in the Drupal community and funds the core team of Open Social. This distribution was developed completely open source, so when we asked the Drupal community for help of course we had to ask ourselves how we could motivate people to get involved.

Studies have shown that most companies who use open source materials also contribute to the open source community and then profit from this immensely, for example by allocating time for their employees to work on open source projects and then using elements of the code. This return on investment is especially high for Drupal.

Alongside the personal and financial benefits another motivation for people to participate is that it connects the success of Drupal to their personal success and vice versa. This symbiosis of community and individual contributors only works when enough people are active within that community and the old guard helps newcomers work through the difficulties that occur when they first start to contribute. If you want to know more about the scaling of open source communities, this is an interesting article by Dries Buytaert on the topic.

Open source projects are all over the web and they can solve almost any problem that we, as developers, encounter. I, as a frontend developer, use open-source products all the time starting from popular libraries like Bootstrap or Lodash and finishing with small ones, for example for handling scroll animations.

On the other hand, in most cases money is not a factor. People start their own projects every day without thinking about money. One of the most common reasons is that developers want to solve their own problems or learn a new technology, but they also need a goal. So they start a project that with time becomes a useful open-source library. Open-source, of course, gives endless possibilities to promote yourself and is a great addition to your CV.

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.

The success of open source software (OSS) projects depends on sustained contributions by developers who often display a wide variety of contribution patterns. Project leaders and stakeholders would strongly prefer that developers not only maintain but preferably increase their contributions over time as they gain experience. Corporations increasingly complement OSS developer motivations (such as fit in terms of shared values with the project community) by paying them to sustain contributions. However, practitioners argue whether payment helps or hurts projects because monetary compensation may dampen developer motivation in the long run, making it difficult for project leaders to understand what to expect from developers over time. Using Herzberg motivation-hygiene framework, we explore how developer perceptions of value fit with the project and being paid interact to determine the level of code contribution and its rate of change over time (i.e., growth). Using a survey of 564 developers across 431 projects on GitHub, we build a three-level growth model explaining the code contribution and its growth over a six-month period. We find that value fit with the project positively influences both the level and growth of code contribution. However, there are notable differences among paid and unpaid developers in the impact of value fit on their level and growth in code contributions over time. The implications of our work will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and organizations investing in open source projects.

It's never been easy to learn programming. But despite tons of ways to learn how to code, we believe that the best way to improve your skills is by contributing to open source projects.

The open source community provides a great opportunity for aspiring programmers to distinguish themselves; and by contributing to various projects, developers can improve their skills and get inspiration and support from like-minded people. But most importantly, they can prove that they can build fantastic experiences that people love.

Previously, we have discussed what are open source projects and why open source is good for your business. In this article, we'll explain why you should contribute to such projects, how to contribute, and what projects to choose. This article is geared towards developers who are just starting their career and would like to get involved with the community (and maybe become a coding genius).

Third, you get the chance to be part of an active open source community where you can meet like-minded people and supporters. Moreover, if you're a freelancer and actively contribute to open source projects, you increase your chances of being noticed by potential employers. 2ff7e9595c