Elsevier

Research Policy

Volume 32, Issue 7, July 2003, Pages 1159-1177
Research Policy

Motivation of software developers in Open Source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(03)00047-7Get rights and content

Abstract

The motives of 141 contributors to a large Open Source Software (OSS) project (the Linux kernel) was explored with an Internet-based questionnaire study. Measured factors were both derived from discussions within the Linux community as well as from models from social sciences. Participants’ engagement was particularly determined by their identification as a Linux developer, by pragmatic motives to improve own software, and by their tolerance of time investments. Moreover, some of the software development was accomplished by teams. Activities in these teams were particularly determined by participants’ evaluation of the team goals as well as by their perceived indispensability and self-efficacy.

Introduction

The idea of Open Source Software (OSS) has gained more and more attention in the last years. OSS is usually developed by a loosely-knit community of programmers spread all over the world, who contribute to a software project via Internet without necessarily being employed or paid by an institution. In most cases, such an institution does not even exist. The objective of the present study was to explore the motivation of such persons who spend considerable time and effort in OSS projects “for free”. The data were collected within the Linux kernel project, one of the most active OSS projects in the world that has a relatively long history and a high popularity (see Moon and Sproull, 2002, for a recent documentation). In addition to scientific interests, a better understanding of motivational processes within the Linux kernel project might help to improve software development processes in other OSS projects as well as in the corporate world.

In the following sections, we will first describe briefly the main principles of OSS development and discus suggestions about motivational processes that originate from the OSS community itself. Then, we will present two theoretical models from social sciences that might provide a conceptual framework for the explanation of persons’ involvement in OSS projects. The first has its roots in research on voluntary action for social movements and related community work (Klandermans, 1997, Simon et al., 1998) and specifies different classes of motives. If we understand the Linux community as a social movement with certain social and political interests, this model might be suitable to explain the motivation of its members. The second model specifies motivational processes of individuals when they work in small teams (Hertel, 2002, Karau and Williams, 2001, Karau et al., 2000). Since some of the Linux kernel development might be conducted in project teams, team-based motives might also play an important role in order to understand developers’ activities in OSS projects. A web-based questionnaire was developed based on these two conceptual models and completed by members of the Linux kernel community. After describing this questionnaire and its results, we will discus the implications of the results for our understanding of the motivational processes in OSS projects, as well as for the possible improvement of such projects.

Section snippets

Open Source Software

In Open Source Software development, the source code (i.e. the human-readable commands) of a computer program is publicly available and usually shared via the Internet. Every Internet user with sufficient skills can join the project at any time, for instance by downloading the source code and implementing extensions or corrections. Usually, software developers contribute to OSS projects “for free”, either as a hobby or during their regular working hours even when OSS development is not part of

The Linux kernel development process

Linux is a PC-based operating system that has been developed as Open Source Software along the structure of the UNIX operating system. The Linux system consists of a large number of programs or modules that are arranged around a kernel. The task of the kernel is to give the programs access to resources such as hard disk storage, random access memory, network band width, etc. The central role of the kernel makes it an essential part of the Linux operating system, currently containing about two

Suggestions from the OSS community

While Stallman, 1994a, Stallman, 1994b on OSS might be seen as rather ideological, first thoughts about motivational processes in OSS projects can be found in publications by Raymond (1999). According to Raymond, an OSS project is usually born by “scratching a developer’s personal itch” (Raymond, 1999, p. 32). He compares the development process to a bazaar, where everyone can join and contribute, creating an inspiring, creative and democratic atmosphere. Raymond contrasted this bazaar style

Relevant models from social science

In addition to a rather intuitive approach to understand the motives of OSS developers, we wanted to base the present investigation also on more systematic approaches as provided by theoretical models from social sciences. Two models from social psychology are particularly relevant in this context.

The present study

A web-based questionnaire survey was conducted based on the two described motivational models in order to explore the motives of OSS contributors systematically. However, suggestions of possible motives from discussions within the Linux community were integrated in the operationalization of the model components.

The Extended Klandermans Model was used to explore more general motives for participating in the Linux kernel community, either by contributing pieces of software or by following the

Recruitment and data collection procedure

Data were collected between 15 February and 12 April 2000 via the Internet. About 4 weeks before the survey started, the study was announced on relevant mailing-lists of the Linux kernel community. Moreover, a web-page was installed on which the goals and the planed procedure of the questionnaire study were explained including information about the persons conducting the study (i.e. the authors of this paper). In order to increase the acceptability of the study as well as to increase the

Results

The result section is divided into two parts. In the first part, we present the analyses related to the components of the EKM as potential motivational predictors of participants’ more general engagement in Linux-related activities. Apart from writing software, these activities include also reading and writing comments on the Linux kernel mailing-list. The EKM-related analyses were conducted across both the developer group and the interested reader group. In the second part, we present the

Discussion

One of the most compelling aspects of Open Source Software projects is that they are predominantly based on voluntary contributions from software developers without organizational support in a traditional sense (Moon and Sproull, 2002). One central question is, what motivates these persons to contribute to OSS projects “for free”, and what rewards do they expect. The objective of the present study was to explore these motives empirically within one of the most prominent OSS projects: The Linux

Acknowledgements

We thank SuSe Germany for sponsoring a number of lottery prizes for the participants in this study.

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