03/26/2008

OpenLogic announced the results of a survey of the OpenLogic Expert Community. The survey shows that OpenLogic Expert Community members work in a wide range of jobs and have a wide range of motivations for developing and supporting open source software.

ebizQ received the following:

The poll was conducted with OpenLogic Expert Community members in the first week of March 2008. Fifty Expert Community members responded, most of whom participate in several open source projects.   In summary, the poll of OpenLogic Expert Community Members found:

Open source developers are not open source “fanatics.”

• 50 percent of respondents work for proprietary software companies, whereas only 6 percent work for an open source company that primarily provides software and/or services around open source.



• 72 percent of respondents claimed there is some overlap between their day job and their open source work.   Not all open source software will be commercialized.



• 50 percent of respondents said there is no commercial company associated with the projects they work on.



• 84 percent of respondent’s felt that widely used open source software would not necessarily have a commercial company associated with it.

Open source developers are motivated by both money and altruism.

• Although 52 percent of respondents claimed that money was a major driver for joining OpenLogic’s Expert Community, 64 percent said they joined to help support open source software.

 “The open source community can not be easily defined by simple stereotypes or descriptions,” said Stormy Peters, director of community and partner programs at OpenLogic. “What the 50 leading project leads who answered our survey tells us is that people have various motivations for working in open source.”

The full results of the survey can be found at http://www.openlogic.com/blogs/author/stormy/.