Career in Open Source? Relevant Competencies for Successful Open Source Developers / Karriere in Open Source? Relevante Kompetenzen für erfolgreiche Open Source Entwickler

Abstract

Open Source (OS) offers new ways of career for software developers. The article describes relevant competencies in a systematic structure along characteristic principles and challenges in Open Source projects. The results are based on a Grounded Theory content analysis of interviews with Open Source software developers, their project managers and human resource managers in Open Source software companies. Implications for future Human Resource Management in software companies are presented as an outlook. Zusammenfassung Open Source bietet für Software-Entwickler neue Wege der Karriere. Der Beitrag skizziert die hierfür notwendigen Kompetenzen in einer systematischen Struktur entlang von charakteristischen Merkmalen und Herausforderungen der Entwicklung in Open Source Projekten. Die Ergebnisse basieren auf Interviews mit Open Source Software Entwicklern, Entwicklungsleitern und Personalentwicklern in Open Source Unternehmen, die im Sinne eines Grounded Theory Ansatzes ausgewertet wurden. Handlungsempfehlungen für zukünftige Personalentwicklungsmaßnahmen in Software Unternehmen bilden den abschließenden Ausblick.

How Developers Acquire FLOSS Skills

“…In all parts, participants were asked common demographic questions and about their FLOSS participation. The distinct portion in each part related to the acquisition of FLOSS skills identified in prior work [2,3,22]. The questions connected with each of the skills examined (see Table 1 in Section 5) were ordered randomly and each appeared in two survey parts.…”

“…Contributing code to a FLOSS project requires both technical skills and social skills such as the ability to coordinate with others, to clearly articulate an argument [2], to give constructive feedback and to comply with social rules [3]. Basic information and communications technology (ICT) skills are described as including "the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet" [4].…”