First Full Findings from FLOSS-US: The Free/Libre and Open Source Developer Survey for 2003
Paul A. David, Andrew H. Waterman and Seema Arora
SIEPR-Project NOSTRA Working Paper
(September 2003).

Abstract

Responses to an (English language ) web-questionnaire containing 45 items were solicited from “developers of free/llibre and open source software” (F/LOSS), by publishing announcements of the survey at approximately 50 websites and mailing lists thought to be read frequently by such persons. The survey period lasted for 20 weeks, opening on January 28, 2003 (when the first English language announcement was posted to Slashdot.org,) and closing on June 17, 2003. Succeeding announcements, targeted to specific populations of developers, were posted in relevant foreign languages on open source websites for France, Germany, Italy, Russia, several South American countries, and Linux User Groups in India. Announcements were sent also to mailing lists associated with particular open source projects, e.g., Linux Kernel, KDE, GNOME, xFree86, and OpenOffice. A total of 1588 responses were collected from individuals residing in 65 different countries. Tabulations of the answers to each question were made available shortly after the survey was closed (at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/floss-us/stats/ ).

Whereas the first FLOSS Survey for 2002 (sponsored by the EC) had drawn responses primarily from European F/LOSS developers (71% reported being resident in Europe or Russia, 13% in the U.S., and roughly 17% living elsewhere in Europe or other regions) the FLOSS-US survey achieved broader regional coverage with a little less than six-tenths as many respondents: 53% reported being resident in Western Europe, 27% in North America, 8% in Russia and Eastern Europe, 5% in East Asia, 3% in Australia and New Zealand, 3% in Latin America, and 1% in the Middle East and Africa.

Although there are some significant demographic and regional differences in the responses, the following general conclusions have emerged from this preliminary analysis of the data:

  1. F/LOSS developers tend to be highly educated and employed, with ambitions of future career advancement. Regardless of whether they started writing “open source” code in the 1970’s, 1980’s or more recently, their mean age at the time was 26-27. The median starting age was closer to 22.

  2. Contributing to the community of developers, promoting the F/LOSS movement, and improving software’s functionality all frequently motivated respondents to start developing F/LOSS. Most respondents support the use of GNU GPL and similar “open source” licenses as a means of protecting software users’ general freedom, and ensuring that credit is given for their work. F/LOSS developers tend to believe their way of working can supplant much of proprietary software development.

  3. Most developers report working on F/LOSS mainly on weekends and after the end of their employed workdays, although many work on F/LOSS in connection with their employment or studies. They spend the greatest amounts of this time coding, debugging, and testing software, rather than in other project activities (e.g., distribution support, administration, etc.).

  4. As their careers in F/LOSS development progress, developers describe themselves as typically taking more influential roles in their projects; they also tend to work more hours per week and in more intense stints.

  5. Approximately 50% of the respondents report having earned money through their work on F/LOSS. Support for F/LOSS projects from external businesses and organizations has increased significantly since a decade ago, particularly since 2000. Over half of the sample have worked on F/LOSS projects that were being supported by external sources.

  6. Approximately 50% of developers launched their projects and are the “project maintainer” for their current project; the latter are typically small, and so correspond roughly with the “I-mode” project categorization used by Dalle and David (2003), rather than to the “C-mode” (community) project category.

  7. While most of the developers report contributing to a only a few projects, a small number have been involving in many projects (the median number of projects being 6, and the mean being 5.5). Approximately half of the developers say they wrote almost all of their most recent project’s code, and an equal proportion rate their contribution very important. Approximately one-third of developers say they contributed only incrementally to their most recent project.