But what motivates participants? - Article on Ars Technica

Hi

I have just seen this item on Ars Technica UK about participation in open source projects;

Open source projects rely on donated time: But what motivates participants?

I have not read the full research report (subscription required), but key items from the news story;

“Results showed that developers who experienced both internal and external motivations contributed more to the project.”

“developers whose work had a social element were more likely to continue contributing to the project”

I hope people find this useful.

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Thanks so much for sharing it!

Thanks for sharing this @plwt some things I pulled from it that felt meaningful:

  • developers whose work had a social element were more likely to continue contributing to the project
    -> MDN has reported that people who make an edit, are more likely to continue contributing if they are in some way connected to the community. The social element feels important to pay attention to, and not surprised to see that there. If people can’t find the community (or tap into the social element) that’s going to be a deterrent for sure.
  • They found that full-time employment (particularly in a field relevant to statistics) was associated with increased participation in R development. The authors think this suggests that participation in the project may be related to work that developers are doing for their
    employers
    -> It’s true that many open source projects benefit from their products being part of business, but contribution to projects is something developers and the business need to make a priority for it to happen. Some projects (nodeJS, Joomla, Drupal among othes) have a clear articulation of how contribution can increase the hirablity of individuals and boost brands of development shops .
    I wonder what Mozilla’s equivalent is ? How could contributing to Mozilla be a brand-boosting/reputation enhancing opportunity for businesses?
  • After all, this work is uncompensated and cuts into leisure time.
    ->I think this is an interesting comment. I don’t think I’ve heard seen other volunteering articles describe volunteering this way. I think probably because we think of FOSS as lending skills we already have, vrs building new ones, but IMHO that’s false.

Thanks for sharing!

I guess one question this article triggers for me is “what is understood by Mozillians desire to contribute to Mozilla?”.

I know this is a not very scientific method, but how could we ask 5 contributors from L10n, SUMO, ReMo, MDN, Webmaker (apologies for any that have been forgotten) to answer (in less than 100 words);

  1. Why did you want to start contributing to Mozilla?
  2. What makes you want to continue contributing to Mozilla?

Apologies if this has already been done, but this could form the basis of a Mozilla equivalent of that research. It could also help understand the motivators behind different Mozilla teams to enable participation increase strategies to match areas of demand for more contributors.

If we know the answers for the two questions are typically along the lines of “x” and “y” for a contributor involved in L10n work (for example), if there is a need for more contributors for L10n activities, then meeting those needs could help increase participation.

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In l10n land, we ask that question. The answers depend a lot on the individual, and on the locale. I.e., German is different to Upper Sorbian.

I could see l10n being specifically different here, because the talent for a particilar language is focused in a particular region. So at the point of difficulty with access to tech, there’s not much we can do.

I understand and agree with your point, and I would take it further and say that locale issues whilst are likely to be more relevant to l10n, may also impact any comments back from people in other teams.

I was thinking of this as initially more of a “snapshot” of peoples contribution stories rather than anything deeper, but certainly locale issues would need to be considered when looking at any responses.