Ask HN: Why do you do open source?

7 points by shintoist 13y ago ↗ HN

We're currently working on my bachelor's thesis on the subject of why people give up their free time and work on open source projects. As a first step, we're collecting data on the motivations behind it.

There's just one question on the form, but please write as much as you have time to! Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MtXwd4kVF6kSuC4q_4rDaUksBRckLaCfgJGP6_JKSnY/viewform

5 comments

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pytrin 13y ago ↗

This old discussion on the Programmers StackExchange might be of interest - http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/3233/why-do-p...

S4M 13y ago ↗

Off topic, but yet another good discussion that was closed by some narrow minded moderator.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago ↗

Really? it is an interesting topic, for HN, but not for a Q&A site. (I actually sound like a Jeff Atwood snippet.)

eru 13y ago ↗

It's not always free time. At companies I worked for, we upstreamed open-source changes, because we wanted to shift the burden of maintenance.

But I sometimes have similar motivations for contributing my changes to open source projects privately, too.

drobilla 13y ago ↗

Painters paint, hackers hack