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Open Source Developers Mostly Pros, Not Weenies
SpinyNorman writes: "Survey shows open source developers mostly veteran pros, not slashdot weenies. Slashdot weenie Hemos should have submitted this himself already seeing as he was involved in it as LinuxWorld!
Open source a needed outlet for programming pros." Like any survey, it's bound to miss some avenues of exploration, but this is the best look at a large group of open source developers I've seen yet. The survey itself (a joint project of the Boston Consulting Group and Slashdot-parent OSDN) lives at www.osdn.com/bcg, or you can jump straight to it in either PDF or html.
I thought the study was pretty informative and helps dispel some of the preconceived notions of the high school kids in their basements. It's actually 27 year olds in their basements. :-)
This survey could not have been accurate because there wasn't a choice for vote for "Cowboy Neal"!!!!
Just my US$2e-02. OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Is it significant that 34% of SourceForge developers responded but only 2.4% of Linux Kernel list subscribers? Does this survey prove anything more than "SourceForge developers are more likely to be successfully trolled than Linux Kernel list subscribers?"
John
As the PDF link is broken, and the HTML link is annoying, here are some short-cuts: Motivation for programmers, Job functions, Time Spent, Feelings about OS software, Project desires
Kind thoughts do not change the world
most open source zealots are damn good coders, and yes, many of them even have jobs and a house/apartment!
Everything was great until I came across this: Most open source zealots haven't written a line of code in their life. Most open source authors are pragmatic and appreciate the benefits in particular areas, and their approach is anything but zealotry. There is a vast chasm of difference between the attitudes of a Slashdot Warrior advocating the true way of enlightenment, and the people who are behind the usable open source.
A friend of mine who, like me, is a professional software developer once likened programmers to guys who love their cars, they just love to show you what's under the hood.
I mean, really, it doesn't take much poking and prodding around the Internet to find dozens of programmer resource sites, most of which have tons and tons or free code. Programmers, for the most part, feel a sort of comradery (sp?) with each other and as such aren't very hesitant to share their code with other programmers. There have been many occassions where I've gotten a third-party product developer to open up the code base, despite licensing or legal issues, so I could help him/her customize the product to suite my employer's or client's needs.
Also, I believe there comes a time when a professional developer is either experienced or learned enough to understand the "how" of just about any piece of programming, even if they don't have the experise to jump in and do it. For example, I understand how 3d engines work, despite my never having coded one from the ground up (so to speak). I think opening up the code base of your neat-o project is a little easier to take when you realize that other competent developers are going to basically understand how you accomplished what you've done.
As for "weenies" not showing off their code...perhaps they don't have code of their own to show?
My sigs always suck.
put into developing, say the Linux kernel...
:). Viz "Linux....developed by a thousand Microsofts....for free."
and figured out how big a company is needed to reproduce that.
Would make a good "tag-line"
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
That's true actually.. most of the flaming I see tends to be from people who don't contribute. And it's not restricted to Linux either I've seen the same in the FreeBSD camp.
Real programmers shut up and let their work speak for them.
I don't know about anybody else, but I have only ~8 months of programming
experience, and I feel that I'm relatively proficient. (I know there
are always people better than me, and things to learn - this isn't a flame/troll).
But my point is, I learned most of this stuff myself, and I can't help but
wonder if part of the reason I grasped some of these concepts faster is that
I was able to actually examine Open Source code multiple times to learn how
things were done. So in that way, I was learning from professional programmers,
which in turn, could possibly (most likely) generate more professional
programmers, which due to their background of learning from OSS will probably
also contribute to the OSS community, and some other new programmer will start
the same way.
(Self-fulfilling prophecy?)
You have to admit, the current generation of computer users, raised on the Web and AIM, isn't of too much use for a lot of things. Years of passive entertainment has dulled their senses, and they would rather the computers played with them than they play with the computers.
There are so many users who are *lost* when the network is down... it's like they don't know what to do with a computer. The past generation knew how to tinker because it was the entertainment... now the spirit's being lossed. It's a good thing the old-timers are so tenacious.
http://www.osdn.com/bcg/BCGHACKERSURVEY.pdf
-Jon
this is my sig.
...and statistics coming from a not-even-remotely-detached source.
Don't feel like calling into question the verity of the methodology employed in a survey of open source developers by a open source company; it's obviously as trustworthy as a survey of databases as performed/sponsored by Oracle.
I'm not even sure what a sweeping generalization like this proves other than some of us really like to program.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I know what a weenie is, (thanks to 7th grade phys-ed), but how are we defining 'Pro'?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Wow, 9/10 Open Source developers are personally convinced that they are 'professionals' who know more than everyone else.
This is news why?
technoshamanic resistance within hyper-transgressive ontology
How many times do you get to work on something really creative at your day job?
Most work is either database, accounting, or doing web apps with some really broken methodology/tool.
The most fun I have had is working on non-work realated things just for the sake of writing some fun code.
and they didnt want to learn it, unless they HAD to. The older guys out there all seem to pretty much love linux, since alot of them have worked with unixes for along time. And is very athome on a linux system, whilest most younger programmers come from a Windows backgroup(most danish schools use windows systems) and maybe they feel abit scared in changing OSes. And more importantly, they dont really know the strenght in *nixes. Since they where never thaught, they only know that MS insist that thier OS does everything a unixbox does, just easier. So, why boughter right?
/dev/).
Heck, it was a older guy who got me interested in linux by showing me what it was about(via. a perlscript that used system() to rip encode mp3s).
I instantly saw the coolness in commandline programs, and then he showed me about how easy it was to dump a midi sysex to a mididevice (aka. the wicked coolness of
So, my point.. i think the reason that more older guys are involved in linux, is many of them are very used/comftible with *nix system.
Most open source developers started in college or before. The maturity level in open source represents the *maturing* of open source. No one has replaced Linus, but there are newcomers like Marcello. Many other projects are still spearheaded by the same people that started them in their basements when they were teenagers. As far as I know, there hasn't been a massive UV radiation die-off, or kidnapping/cyborg replacement program of key developers
This study is meaningless.
Hi we sent email to sourceforge members, and linux kernel mailing list members, and got a lots of numbers.
First, the response rate from Sourceforge was 34.2%, which is not representative of most of sourceforge. How many of those contacted were in active development? How many alpha projects are there on sourceforge that have had little development, and will continue with little development?
Second, there was only a 2.4% response by the lkml members. Would this 2.4% be the active members of the list, or mainly the people that don't participate?
Third, this only accounts for people on sourceforge projects or linux, which may not be representative of all open source projects. Yes it would be very difficult to survey more members, but how do we know that sourceforge members and linux hackers are not different than other projects?
Fourth, there listing of open source principles(slide 8) is only representative of a specific group of open source developers. The intellectual property ideas("Free speech, not free beer", and copyleft) don't apply to people not using the gpl. This may mis-represent the people who participated in the survey.
This survey is much more useful if, instead of claiming to represent all open source developers, it admitted to being primarily about linux/gpl developers. Or if more information was given about what projects(activity, license, and activity by developer) the participants of the sourceforge survey were involved in.
The survey is interesting if looked at in relation only to the sourceforge community, but is not able to be applied to all open source developers.
--xPhase
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
I was one of the measly 2% of the survey respondents who was female. (Yes, guys, geek girls do exist- now wipe the slobber off your screen and move along please, nothing to see here.) But where oh where are all the other female open source folks? I mean, I know female CS types are rare, but are they rarer still in the open source world? If so, why?
I'd also be curious to know which *types* of open source projects seem to attract larger-than-usual numbers of women to the contributing ranks. From personal experience, I can say that Post-Nuke, an open source fork of PHP-Nuke, has a fairly high percentage of female participants/developers. But why? Maybe because it's modular and women can go off and work on a module on their own and then go back and submit it later, and thus feel less pressure to need to know all of the ins and outs of every little system. Or maybe it's because it's tempting to play around with modifying the themes/skins (not to get all stereotypical about women being attracted to the GUI end of things while guys do the coding of the guts of the program, but some stereotypes have a good basis in reality). Or maybe because it's a content management system, and women have long had a foothold with online personal publishing or personal communication systems (blogs, online diaries, IM'ing, plain ole personal home pages having long had a sizeable female early adopter contingent- geez, maybe we womenfolk will only pick up a technology if we can use it to *talk*?).
[sigh]
- Asparagirl
asparagirl at dca dot net
It's the pros who do the actual work. It's the weenies who sit around and bash Microsoft while pontificating and arguing the subtleties of the GPL vs. whatever or Linux vs. BSD on Slashdot all day.
Something that the clueful "corporate project managers" should look at here is that programmers: extremely capable and intelligent programmers who are probably qualified for just about any job, do their best work when they aren't limited by meetings, Gantt charts and unnecessary bureaucracy.
It is extremely unlikely that Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, etc. could *ever* be developed in a corporate environment. Matter of fact, far simpler projects are seldom completed without a huge effort on the part of the engineers to overcome unnecessary and counterproductive management obstacles.
There's some valuable information here. Of course, it will likely be missed because everyone has to get to the meeting.
The benefits of this survey goes well beyond any real numbers. It does a great job illustrating, in very simple terms, what open source is and what makes it possible.
You may want to share it with others outside the Slashdot/Open Source community.
It's called More Than A Gigabuck
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
I found the most interesting numbers to be on Page 37. There, 19% of respondents admitted that they were stealing time from their employers to write open-source software. Would anyone like to bet on what fraction of the 46% who answered "do not participate at work" were telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? What fraction of the "part of core job" respondents were in the "not known by supervisor" category at some point in their careers?
There are a lot of people who work on open-source software in their spare time. There are quite a few who get paid to do it. Bless them all. However, these numbers seem to indicate that at least 19% and probably much more than a third are regularly working on open-source projects while they're being paid to do something else. Maybe it's time to question whether the equation "open source == moral high ground" has any validity.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
On page 7, the authors make a distinction between three groups: "leadership", "virtual teams", and "user developers". Their selection methods seem to be skewed toward identifying many of the first group, somewhat less of the second, and relatively few of the third. I wonder - I really wonder - how their findings wrt motivation, experience level, or licit/illicit use of work time might be different if they'd managed to capture a more balanced cross-section of the three categories. Heck, it would help even to have an estimate in hand of the relative numbers of people in each category. At the very least, BCG should have asked in the survey which category the respondent felt best represented their own role in their open-source project(s).
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
I'm a geek girl, and interestingly enough my day job is working on a content management system for a large company. I actually do some of the development on the CMS.
I love content management, but I don't particularly like programming. I'm not sure why. I know why I like content management -- scripting allows me to be creative. I love HTML, graphics, and PHP, and I particularly love putting all of those together to form a website. I came from a background of desktop publishing and journalism, and layout has always been my strength.
I like programming in scripting languages like PHP or sh, but I don't like Perl and I don't like hardcore languages like Java and C++. It seems to me that these languages get in my way more than anything else. When I want to write out a SQL result set, I want to just put in a table and drop in some special tags that let me echo out what I found. I don't like JSP's "heavy" syntax. It seems ugly to me. PHP is very elegant and simple, and that is what really appeals to me.
I think that women would have more success in the industry if this industry were more elegant. In general, I believe that women tend to design simple things that perform their function while looking fantastic, while men tend to not care how nice something looks and want function purely over form. This often comes down to men not understanding why, for instance, a lot of women (and a lot of non-geek men!) cringe when faced with a command line. Having come from a writer/artist background, it is important for me to be able to feel comfortable around my computers. I'm not a big fan of "pure power"; I want things that perform well and look nice while doing it.
I hate to say that most geek guys tend to criticize me for these types of feelings. I've been around critical men for long enough that the criticism tends to roll off. However, a lot of guys still don't understand that though I know what a motherboard is, I don't want 47 of them on my living room floor! I don't want my house to look like Star Wars, and I don't want it to look like a museum -- I just want to be comfortable living in it.
I think the programmer contingent will continue to be mostly men because it is not yet elegant. The Linux community will continue to be mostly men because Linux is not yet elegant. But women will thrive in usability groups and design houses where they can make things better and easier to use.
(The above is my opinion, and I don't speak for all the women out there.)
--SlashChick
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I selected to be an (amateur) porn actress by day, and an Open Source Software geek at night.
Actually, my job keeps me busy only a few days in the month, so the rest of the time, I'm doing software development with the community.
One needs to make a living and do what they like the most. Luckily, I can do both.
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.