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

Marco Gerosa, Igor Wiese, Bianca Trinkenreich, Georg Link, Gregorio Robles, Christoph Treude, Igor Steinmacher, Anita Sarma

TL;DR

As OSS evolves with industry involvement and social coding platforms, this study reevaluates contributor motivation using a 242-person online survey grounded in the von2012carrots framework and prior seminal surveys. It documents a sustained prominence of intrinsic and internalized motives like learning, altruism, and kinship, alongside a notable rise in social motives such as helping others and reputation, while extrinsic pay remains limited. The results show that motivations migrate from extrinsic to intrinsic as contributors gain tenure, with novices prioritizing career- and learning-related incentives and experienced contributors increasingly valuing altruism and social engagement. These insights offer practical guidance for OSS governance, education, and research tool design to attract and retain diverse contributors amid the shifting OSS landscape.

Abstract

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.

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

TL;DR

As OSS evolves with industry involvement and social coding platforms, this study reevaluates contributor motivation using a 242-person online survey grounded in the von2012carrots framework and prior seminal surveys. It documents a sustained prominence of intrinsic and internalized motives like learning, altruism, and kinship, alongside a notable rise in social motives such as helping others and reputation, while extrinsic pay remains limited. The results show that motivations migrate from extrinsic to intrinsic as contributors gain tenure, with novices prioritizing career- and learning-related incentives and experienced contributors increasingly valuing altruism and social engagement. These insights offer practical guidance for OSS governance, education, and research tool design to attract and retain diverse contributors amid the shifting OSS landscape.

Abstract

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.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 26 sections, 2 figures, 6 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Research Method
  4. Selection of previous surveys
  5. Identification of similar questions
  6. Definition of motivation factors
  7. Likert-scale questions
  8. Demographics
  9. Recruitment
  10. Filtering
  11. Data analysis
  12. Likert-scale questions
  13. Open questions
  14. Segment analysis
  15. Replication package
  16. ...and 11 more sections

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: Responses to the 5-point Likert-scale items for motivation to contribute to OSS. Left hand (yellow) shows levels of disagreement, middle (grey) shows neutral, and right (green) shows levels of agreement.
  • Figure 2: Motivation migration flow. The size of the boxes on the left represents the number of contributors with the motivation to start, and on the right to continue, contributing to OSS. The width of the connections is proportional to the number of contributors who shifted from one motivation to the other.