Ask HN: How many professional developers contribute to open source? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many professional developers contribute to open source?

22 pointsmorinted12 comments

When I was learning to code and tinker with computers, all my favorite tools were open source. As soon as I had the ability, I started to contribute to open source software. I assumed this was the norm.

However, in the professional jobs I've had since, I've noticed that not many (if any) of my co-workers worked on open source projects in their free time or in their past.

Has HN had different experiences? What sort of people end up working on open source? How many developers end up working on open source?

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Note: I don't want to imply that people should be programming all the time just to get a job, I don't mean to perpetuate the ideas that cause developers to burn out. Everything in moderation.

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I'd ask a different question. How many professional developer's employers are investing their resources back into open source?

Since tech companies are the financial beneficiaries of everything open from operating systems to databases and programming languages, shouldn't "they" be reinvesting?

Why would we expect professionals to do this for free? When they do it is extremely generous.

My contract says my employer owns absolutely everything, everywhere, any time, so, no, I do not contribute to open source in my free time.

Naturally, we depend heavily on open source software to run the business...

Have you asked? I had a similar contract and when I asked if I could contribute to a large open source project they said yes.

I have noticed the same, I have worked with probably 500 developers in my 10 year career - I do a lot of integration work, so I communicate with developers at external companies a lot, I would say only ~5 of them contributed to open source, so roughly 1%

Lots of them wanted to - but it was just a matter of time ... they have full time jobs, families etc

Probably 1% or less. Obviously, HN is skewed, but where I've worked I've been the only one or the only one out of a few that codes outside of work (and I don't do it that much).

The thing is, after 6-8 hours of working, most people want to do other stuff. Read, spend time with kids/wife/SO, go take a walk, play video games, etc. If they make any contribution to open source, it's during work time to serve business needs.

A large portion of this is dependent on the software stack you end up working with and the associated communities. The Ruby on Rails and javascript communities heavily advocated open source work so many developers have open source work and/or a blog. Then you look at .Net. The amount of open source work is significantly smaller. Most software stacks have communities somewhere inbetween

Who are the core that drive this massive, amazing ecosyssytem (yeah, please what's another word for ecosystem? Am I the only one tired of it to describe any system?). Here are some thoughts.

1. There are the leaders of the movement who often don't work full time it's for themselves or an employer that pays them to be them. A few examples of this group (I'm including both "free" and "open") would include Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, Eric S. Raymond, Tim O'Reilly, Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, John Gilmore. That's obviously not a complete list.

2. There are the outstanding professional developers with passion for their FOSS projects. They always seem to work for themselves or always manage to find employers who encourage open source contributions.

3. There are developers who are learning or otherwise haven't yet started working full time.

4. The 1% (mentioned by several commenters) who have very busy lives but manage to contribute as much as they're able.

I may be off and I'm definitely over simplifying but I say thank god for all four groups and others. I feel gratitude every day.

Yes, the FOSS world is political and narrow at times, which is a shame but that's human beings anywhere you find them.

A tiny fraction, but I suspect many more have tried and been put off by personalities and politics. Quite a lot of better known projects are plain offputting to get involved with.

I know far more who've put out a few bits of solo programmed freeware or shareware, or pushed the odd utility to a library though.

Of all the places I've worked, none have encouraged or suggested contribution, but many have used open source in the business.

I used too, but I'm not interested in being pulled into the increasing amount of politics involved or public scapegoating involved in social media.

I work on open source projects. but mostly my own projects. Because I'm kinda a anarchist, I hate conforming to other projects' coding standard, naming convention and going through their code review procedure.

most of the time, when I find a bug in an open source project, I would directly report and post my solution in the bug report, instead of fixing it myself.

Recently i started contributing to open source projects, I came across a guy who had Java conventions all over the source code for a python codebase i suggested him otherwise but the guy was reluctant. i kind of disappointed.

I've never met someone else in the corporate world that contributes to FOSS.

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