3 ms·
This really depends on the project. Many people just do it in their spare time and have a normal software engineer or similar role working on proprietary softwa
by haukem 5y ago
This really depends on the project. Many people just do it in their spare time and have a normal software engineer or similar role working on proprietary software using open source. Some are still at university and studying. Some are contracting and probably also get some new customers thorough their open source work.
I do not have real data, but I assume that more than 50% of the effort invested in open source is not directly paid by a company. For the Linux kernel 20% to 30% of the commits come from people doing it as a hobby, the Linux kernel is supported very well by big cooperations.
- ghaff 5y agoYou're right. It really does vary. However, in the case of the Linux kernel just about 8% were unpaid as of five years ago. https://thenewstack.io/contributes-linux-kernel/ https://thenewstack.io/contributes-linux-kernel/ I assume that projects like Kubernetes and OpenStack are similar. Obviously many smaller projects are largely developed by people on their own time. I expect this also applies languages and things like that which aren't largely corporate efforts like Go and Rust are.
- watwut 5y agoMajority of people responding to FOSS studies is paid by companies. It is biased toward Linux related open source projects a bit. The thing is, while there are maintenaners of important projects working for free, the idea that most of major open source development is for free is mostly mythology. Large projects are backed by companies.