Conference Proceedings
The shifting sands of motivation: Revisiting what drives contributors in open source
M Gerosa, I Wiese, B Trinkenreich, G Link, G Robles, C Treude, I Steinmacher, A Sarma
Proceedings International Conference on Software Engineering | Published : 2021
Abstract
Open Source Software (OSS) has changed drastically over the last decade, with OSS projects now producing a large ecosystem of popular products, involving industry participation, and providing professional career opportunities. But our field's understanding of what motivates people to contribute to OSS is still fundamentally grounded in studies from the early 2000s. With the changed landscape of OSS, it is very likely that motivations to join OSS have also evolved. Through a survey of 242 OSS contributors, we investigate shifts in motivation from three perspectives: (1) the impact of the new OSS landscape, (2) the impact of individuals' personal growth as they become part of OSS communities, ..
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Grants
Awarded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
Funding Acknowledgements
This work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant numbers 1815486,1815503,1900903, and 1901031, CNPq grant #313067/2020-1, the Government of Spain through project "BugBirth" (RTI2018-101963-B-100), and the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) funding scheme (DE180100153). We also thank the Open Source contributors who spent their time answering our survey. We expect that the results benefit the OSS communities to help their growth and sustainability.