10 reasons why people contribute to Open Source

Doug Belshaw
We Are Open Co-op
Published in
3 min readApr 9, 2020

TL;DR: We’re looking for Open Source contributors to fill in a survey about their motivations, which you can find here.

Planet 4 Day of Action

We Are Open Co-op is delighted to be supporting Greenpeace’s Planet 4 project.

The Greenpeace Planet 4 project is a revolutionary open source project aimed at engaging people who support Greenpeace work and want to take action on behalf of the planet

In line with our mission and raison d’être, we’re helping ensure Planet 4 is a fully-fledged open source project, with both internal and external contributors working together.

Built on top of WordPress tech, Planet 4 powers digital platforms to engage with millions and win campaigns around the world.

To ensure that Planet 4 is ready for an influx of contributors, we’re working on a Day of Action for open source contribution to ensure that Greenpeace has in place the necessary processes and procedures.

To help with our planning towards that, we’re doing some research into the reasons that people contribute to open source projects. Our initial scan, as well as our deep experience, suggests that people contribute for many and varied reasons.

Here are the 10 most common that we’ve come across:

  1. Altruism (e.g. doing pro bono work to make the world a better place)
  2. Gaining skills/experience (e.g. developing competencies that will help their career)
  3. Giving back to the community (e.g. adding a feature or performing a code review because they use the software every day and want to help out)
  4. Paid work (e.g. they’re employed to design the UI for an Open Source project)
  5. Participating in competitions (e.g. Hack days)
  6. Political/social motivations (e.g. feeling empowered by moving forward a particular agenda)
  7. Reputation and recognition (e.g. building a rounded GitHub portfolio in preparation for applying for jobs)
  8. Scratching an itch (e.g. fixing a bug that’s been irritating them)
  9. Side projects (e.g. they have a boring day job and want to feel more fulfilled)
  10. Working with others (e.g. collaborating with people outside of their geographic area or sector)

Many of these are linked. For example, reputation and recognition goes together with side projects, as do working with others and giving back to the community. Open source contributors have overlapping motivations for their contributions, and these may change over time.

We’d like to find out which of these motivations are most important for potential contributors to Greenpeace’s Planet 4 project. That’s why we’re running a survey to inform our planning for the Day of Action. We’d like as many people as possible to complete it, in order to give us a true picture of the landscape.

Please click on the link below to fill in the survey:

>>> CLICK HERE <<<

We would also appreciate it if you would be kind enough to share this as far and wide as possible. Feel free to use the suggested text below to share with your networks. Thanks in advance, and we’ll be sure to share our results!

Are you an #opensource contributor? Check out this post to see if it outlines some of the reasons you contribute, and fill in the survey! #Planet4

I helped out

We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can. Get in touch and see how we can help you transform your remote working practices!

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