Open source software is foundational to the digital world, powering countless industries and technologies we depend on in daily life. Despite this, the open source ecosystem faces sustainability challenges in maintaining financial and labor contributions from the individuals and organizations who depend on it. With recent spates of organizations dropping their support for open source projects, how does the ecosystem continue to encourage financial and labor contributions from individuals, non-profits, corporations, and governments? This survey is an attempt to answer two questions:
- What models of funding, development, and organizational structure are currently used and why?
- Do different funding or structural models work better for different types or sizes of projects?
By participating in this survey, you can provide other open source projects with an understanding of what has worked and what hasn’t for others in the ecosystem. It should take about 10 minutes to complete. To maintain responder privacy, any data shared from this survey will be done so as anonymous, aggregated data.
This survey is part of a public interest technology graduate student research project out of ASU’s College of Global Futures. Participation is voluntary, refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of benefits, and you may also discontinue participation at any time without penalty. You must be 18 years or older to participate. If you have any questions or would like more information, please send them by email to [email protected].
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