Paid vs. Volunteer Work in Open Source

Riehle D, Riemer P, Kolassa C, Schmidt M (2014)

Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Conference contribution, Original article

Publication year: 2014

Publisher: IEEE Press

Pages Range: 3286–3295

Conference Proceedings Title: Pro­ceed­ings of the 47th Hawaii Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Sys­tem Sci­ence

Abstract

Many open source projects have long become com­mer­cial. This paper shows just how much of open source soft­ware devel­op­ment is paid work and how much has remained vol­un­teer work. Using a con­ser­v­a­tive approach, we find that about 50% of all open source soft­ware devel­op­ment has been paid work for many years now and that many small projects are ful­ly paid for by com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, we also find that any non-trivial project bal­ances the amount of paid devel­op­er with vol­un­teer work, and we sug­gest that the ratio of vol­un­teer to paid work can serve as an indi­ca­tor for the health of open source projects and aid the man­age­ment of the respec­tive com­mu­ni­ties.

Authors with CRIS profile

Dirk Riehle Professur für Open Source Software

How to cite

APA:

Riehle, D., Riemer, P., Kolassa, C., & Schmidt, M. (2014). Paid vs. Volunteer Work in Open Source. In Pro­ceed­ings of the 47th Hawaii Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Sys­tem Sci­ence (pp. 3286–3295). IEEE Press.

MLA:

Riehle, Dirk, et al. "Paid vs. Volunteer Work in Open Source." Proceedings of the Pro­ceed­ings of the 47th Hawaii Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Sys­tem Sci­ence IEEE Press, 2014. 3286–3295.

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