The Influence of Open Source Software Volunteer Developers’ Motivations and Attitudes on Intention to Contribute

Wu, Chorng-Guang; Gerlach, James H.; Young, Clifford E.

doi:10.4018/jossp.2011100102

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…Other researchers focused on the motivation of specific contributor profiles, such as newcomers [22], one-time code contributors [23], quasi-contributors [24], and students [25]. Researchers also investigated the relation between motivation and other constructs, like retention [26], task effort [27], intention to contribute [28], and participation level [29]. Specific types of motivations were also investigated [30,31].…”

Section: Rq1a: What Motivates Contributors To Oss Today? Rq1b: How Has Motivation To Contribute Shifted As Oss Has Matured?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Shifting Sands of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors in Open Source

Gerosa

Wiese

Trinkenreich

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)

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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, and (3) the impact of differences in individuals' demographics. Our results show that some motivations related to social aspects and reputation increased in frequency and that some intrinsic and internalized motivations, such as learning and intellectual stimulation, are still highly relevant. We also found that contributing to OSS often transforms extrinsic motivations to intrinsic, and that while experienced contributors often shift toward altruism, novices often shift toward career, fun, kinship, and learning. OSS projects can leverage our results to revisit current strategies to attract and retain contributors, and researchers and tool builders can better support the design of new studies and tools to engage and support OSS development.

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Section: Rq1a: What Motivates Contributors To Oss Today? Rq1b: How Has Motivation To Contribute Shifted As Oss Has Matured?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Shifting Sands of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors in Open Source

Gerosa

Wiese

Trinkenreich

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The motive behind this development model is still unclear to define, but the fact is that the programming in OSS seemed to be a kind of reward and the spirit of contributing to the existing knowledge (Lakhani & Hippel, 2003;Peddibhotla & Subramani, 2007;Wu et al, 2011). Therefore, to a programmer it is a matter of hobby and flavor of participating in an open code.…”

Section: Open Source Software Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Source Software Adaptation in Africa

Bakar

Sultan

Zulzalil

et al. 2014

International Journal of Open Source Software and Processes

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The African continent has long benefited from adopting OSS in its private and public organizations that have changed their way of development, the use and how to acquire proprietary software. This frequency of adaptation does not appear to be in balance with the contribution to the OSS community. Using views from experienced software practitioners working in different organizations across two African countries it has been observed that neglected infrastructure, a wide availability of proprietary software and misconceptions of a clear meaning of Open Source Software across Africa have been an obstacle towards the participation in the OSS technology in the global network.

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“…Other research focused on the motivation of specific contributor profiles, such as newcomers [13], quasi-contributors [14], and students [15]. A number of research also investigated the correlation between motivation and other attributes such as retention [16], task effort [17], intention to contribute [18], and participation level [19]. In this work, we would like to specifically highlight the need for developers to contribute to third party libraries, especially in the context of large ecosystems like NPM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Giving Back: Contributions Congruent to Library Dependency Changes in a Software Ecosystem

Wattanakriengkrai

Wang

Kula

et al. 2023

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

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The widespread adoption of third-party libraries for contemporary software development has led to the creation of large inter-dependency networks, where sustainability issues of a single library can have widespread network effects. Maintainers of these libraries are often overworked, relying on the contributions of volunteers to sustain these libraries. To understand these contributions, in this work, we leverage socio-technical techniques to introduce and formalise dependency-contribution congruence (DC congruence) at both ecosystem and library level, i.e., to understand the degree and origins of contributions congruent to dependency changes, analyze whether they contribute to library dormancy (i.e., a lack of activity), and investigate similarities between these congruent contributions compared to typical contributions. We conduct a large-scale empirical study to measure the DC congruence for the npm ecosystem using 1.7 million issues, 970 thousand pull requests (PRs), and over 5.3 million commits belonging to 107,242 npm libraries. We find that the most congruent contributions originate from contributors who can only submit (not commit) to both a client and a library. At the project level, we find that DC congruence shares an inverse relationship with the likelihood that a library becomes dormant. Specifically, a library is less likely to become dormant if the contributions are congruent with upgrading dependencies. Finally, by comparing the source code of contributions, we find statistical differences in the file path and added lines in the source code of congruent contributions when compared to typical contributions. Our work has implications to encourage dependency contributions, especially to support library maintainers in sustaining their projects.

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The Influence of Open Source Software Volunteer Developers’ Motivations and Attitudes on Intention to Contribute

Cited by 9 publications

References 73 publications

The Shifting Sands of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors in Open Source

The Shifting Sands of Motivation: Revisiting What Drives Contributors in Open Source

Open Source Software Adaptation in Africa

Giving Back: Contributions Congruent to Library Dependency Changes in a Software Ecosystem

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