Why Developers Participate in Open Source Software Projects: An Empirical Investigation.

摘要: Our goal in this study is to provide insight into the motivational profiles of open source contributors. Adopting a functionalist view motivation, we identify five functional dimensions from literature on volunteerism that are relevant context and three development. To assess salience relative strength each explanation for participation, conducted secure Web-based surveys developers who participated large Apache projects. Applying exploratory factor analytic techniques analyze survey data collected 122 participants, found 5 distinct factors underlying motivation participate We then used conjoint analysis importance these motivations. Results indicate while several significant explaining projects, dominant motivations include increasing contributor’s use value software (27 percent) followed by recreational task (19 potential career impacts participation (12 percent). This contributes growing development providing identifying different within those profiles.