Why do you participate in Open Source? (survey) | Hacker News Reader

Why do you participate in Open Source? (survey)

spreadsheets.google.com

25 pointsredslazer31 comments

What a strange, skewed survey. It seems to pre-suppose a single reason you'd participate in Open Source, then asks a bunch of questions so that you can answer "yes, that's right".

None of those questions have an answer I can check that applies to me.

As an example, take the Internationalization library for ASP.NET that I released as Open Source last year. Sure, it's nice to give back to the community and all that, but there's a business reason there as well. It's hosted on one of my product domains, so having developers link to the project has measurable SEO benefits. Weighing that benefit against the negligible competitive advantage of keeping it in-house was the main part of the decision, along with the fact that it was comparably easy to break out as a reusable piece.

"Goodwill" might have weighed slightly, but "Esteem", "Self-Actualization" and all the other tick marks from that survey were never part of the equation.

This isn't limited to small projects, either. Pick any big-name OS project, and chances are you'll find a big corporation or two behind it, promoting (and funding) it to further their own business need.

thanks for the input, basically i only wanted to ask 4 questions

Do you participate? Do you get compensated? Tick all that apply 1 Tick all the apply 2

Which would have told me what in essence, i need. People who participate in Open source (for no financial compensation) have fulfilled the needs associated with the bottom 4 levels of Maslow's Pyramid of needs

Again thanks for the input, i should have made the survey more open ended and just narrowed down the parts where i needed specific answers

I hate it when people put surveys on HN but don't make the data publicly available.

i have no problem making the data publicly available, as soon as i have submitted my first draft to turnitin.com (a plagiarism checker thingy) (done link is below)

to be honest i dont think the information would be much use to anyone because as mentioned the survey pretty much points that respondent in one direction

(Here is a link to the spreadsheet) https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtwEsLgSGhLCdEYwVTB...

I participate in open source mainly as a way of making my hobby projects available to others who might have similar interests, and also as a means of keeping my skills and knowledge up to date. I could spend my time making commercial closed source applications, but for me intellectual curiosity and sharing information (a status/gift economy) trumps the desire to make money.

Added this in the comment box:

I'm not actually employed by anybody - there ARE people on Open Source who are self-employed. You should add that as an option.

Also - You might want to consider making the last question (about what need OpenSource fullfills) into a multiple-choice question. I would tick the last three boxes, but had to settle for the most important (that might have been your goal, of course).

Lastly - Call it Free and Open Source Software. There are people who care about the distinction.

The last attracts me!

There are people who are put off by the social supposition and patronization inherent in insisting on the semantic distinction of "Free [FLOSS] and Open-Source".

This is predicated on the notion of a non-exclusive ownership of "free," as in, the GPL bring "more free" than the MIT license, despite the fact that many in the intended audience would disagree. "Open source" is a sufficiently inclusive term.

...And then there are others who care about the history of how Free and Open Source Software came about. (Do note that I'm from Germany, so for me "Frei", the literal translation of "Free", is closer to Freedom than it is to Free Beer.)

Also note that proponents do not claim ownership of "free" in any sort, but of "Free". Sorry to be nitpicking on this, but it is the name. Likewise, there is no claim that the GPL is "more free" - if you talk to somebody who has a good understanding of this, they will agree that the GPL is less "free" than MIT. However, I and others would argue that the slight reduction in "freedom" is actually worthwhile because it mitigates certain social risks by strengthening the Share And Share Alike aspect.

Most people are well aware of the history; "Free" is a generic term, and attempting to claim it from other open source developers is patronizing.

"Open Source" is inclusive of GPL licensed software -- I don't see the need for a GNU/Linux style distinction in a survey targeted at all open source developers.

I do not wish to claim it. But when I and others say "Free Software", we mean a particular thing. Whether or not you agree with that makes no difference to the reality of the history of the movement.

And yes, "Open Source" includes GPL licensed software, but it does not include the philosophy that I'm interested in and that I think to be vital to community cohesion.

Frankly, I wish there were a term I could use for the code that I make public that isn't in any way associated with some silly "movement" that wants to make my code "free" or otherwise taint it with some form of pretentiousness that I don't intend.

It's code that I'm throwing out onto the internet for other people to use. I can't for the life of me understand why some people think it's so important as to split hairs about definitions and argue about licenses for it.

That would be "open source".

Because there are some people who care about the social and philosophical implications of their work or hobby. If you don't need that, that's fine. Go with "Open Source", or "Copyleft" or whatever suits you.

The only reason why we insist that it is important is because there are others who continue to push that it is not. I never really understood that particular color of "activism", but to each his own, I guess.

The last question is beyond my understanding. Most of time, I hack on FOSS because I need some features, which aren't there. Or I need to fix some bugs developers had no time to take care of, but which prevent me from using the software. Sometimes I give patches to upstream, sometimes I decide that I'm too lazy for communication, or that patches aren't worth publishing.

I do that for my job (I'm being paid for making things work, and we use lots of FOSS software) and I do that on my own leisure-time too (be it some project, or just toying around). But I really don't see any answer to describe something to describe my "I hack to get this working in a way I want" utilitarian needs.

Add: And if I dig deeper, to the reasons why I want it to work, there are too many reasons. Sometimes it's just a part of my job, sometimes I just want to fullfill my interests, sometimes I want to help someone or do something that would matter.

Good luck! Please post your results when done.

Edit: Also, some of the things I checked did not apply to me 100%. I am assuming this is because while they are different in my eyes, they are equivalent in the test giver's eyes.

Remember you are surveying programmers which means T&F equals F. So if you want many programmers to check yes to something that partially applies, you should specify that.

If my assumptions are correct, I would change "Tick all that apply " to say "Tick all that partially or fully apply "

I would remove validation on that page as well or add a nothing applies option to the questions.

If you say that you do not participate in open source projects, then you cannot complete the survey because the required questions at the bottom are not appropriate.

I am guessing it was done on purpose, but mentioning it just in case.

That must also be why directly below the first question, it says "If No Please Stop".

Thanks in advance to anyone who fills out the survey, it is greatly appreciated

You sure have an interesting topic for your Extended Essay (assume that's what it is), mine 4 years ago was pretty geeky but not quite the same level. Get a good advisor and good luck!

ya its for my extended essay and im really enjoying it(weird i know) but im probably heading into Business+Physiology for Uni so something to do with motivation was logical for me. Not really happy with my supervisor but im getting it checked by other people as well. What did you do yours on?

It was an essay for Business and Management advising a internet services company on whether to invest in creating a certain website, mainly looking at the financials and some limited real marketing data. Thanks to Gmail I just found it again, and looking back it's pretty sad, but is a good convincing study. The factors (mainly financial) are not what I would look at if I did it again, but that was partly my very good advisor's pressuring. I had an idea, but it had to be fit within the framework of the "extended essay" framework. Oh, and I'm a senior in college, doing "Technical Information Science), hoping to graduate this spring.

I'll be curious to see the outcome. (you misspelled necessary in the last paragraph).

per olalonde, you'll probably find this post a lot more upvotes and survey participant conversions if you "open source" the survey. right now you're basically asking people to support closed/private research.. and not just any people.. you're asking the open source community -- the demographic i'd suppose least likely to respond to a closed survey.

based on the current parameters my participation does not follow.

Lack of a 'None of the above' option makes at least two of the questions meaningless. Perhaps you might wander across the campus to the psych dept or where ever folks actually make and use surveys, sit at someones feet and learn a bit before you try this again. Were I anyone in a supervisory position over this, things would not go well...

which two questions?

There seems to be a validation on the second "All that apply" question preventing no answers. That seems a little strange as I would hardly say those are universal and everyone has to feel at least one.

thanks for pointing that out to me by putting that i sort of ruining my research. Since im trying to prove that all the contributers have fulfilled all the needs discuss in Tick all the apply and that they were contributing to open source to fullish the higher needs

Did anyone answer that they participate in open source project to "belong"? Because it is a big part for me.

I think it would have been better if I could choose multiple answers to the last question.

"participate" needs to be defined.

I consider using and spreading the use of as participating. I'm sure many do not. (btw neither they nor I are wrong)

Survey Results http://goo.gl/ZKVwa

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