Open Source software has found a valuable corner of the internet in Github and is not seemingly going away anytime soon. One of the main concerns with open source programming world is that as these programs grow and continue to find a place in the internet world, how will these programs be managed and what are the attitudes, experiences, and backgrounds of those who are building, maintaining these open source software platforms.
GitHub.com collaborated with researchers from across the spectrum, and from thousands of open source locations to come up with this survey.
The results are fascinating!
This Survey's Reach Is Far And Wide!
With over 6000 responses from over 3800 open source communities this study is wide in its scope and clear in the results that were discovered. Having over 50 questions the range of topics was quite varied, and provided insights that were not just important, but also provided a clear understanding of what action was most appropriate in the next steps.
Some of the more common concerns that were found that as open source programs in a collaboration type process, the contributors are from all over the world.
This leads to simple issues of miscommunication.
Where one common language is not the norm, you have detailed information that must be communicated in languages that am not the first language for all participants. This can lead to misunderstanding and at times conflicts as complex ideas are shared.
This is something that will have to be addressed, and a standard developed to address it.
Things like experiencing rudeness, name calling, stereotyping and even more serious situations are relatively common. This is symptomatic of often negative interactions between contributors as they
disagree on programming, process, or simply have cultural and linguistic issues that hamper communication.
Knowing that these are issues in the open source world, organizations can work to create more positive working environments, clear behavioral expectations, and clear ramifications if these behaviors are not met.
Open Source: The Brave New World still in Infancy...
Another revelation from this survey was that open source is still predominantly a man’s world. Wit a massive 95% of respondents being male it is clear that for a variety of factors women are not working
in the open source community, or if they do, are not staying in the community for long.
This is admittedly due to the negative atmosphere and a work culture that still is viewed as unwelcoming, stereotypical and even sexually inappropriate. The survey made it clear that working environment in the open source world can use some help.
At the same time, the programs that are being created are getting used and have a firm place in the world. 72% of people responding say they use the open source world programming when looking for new tools.
As long as the programming provides a stable user experience and secure it seems that people are willing to use the open source programming as much as, if not more than proprietary software.
It would seem that while proprietary software is dominating the software market, open source programming is providing a strong alternative that many organizations will investigate as a first step, not as an afterthought.
If You Want To Learn More: The Survey Covers Many More Concepts
The results of this study are encouraging for those who are looking at working in or using open source programming. The findings are far-reaching and we only looked at a small sample of the amazing
information that was found. If you are curious to know what the open source world is all about and how these programs can fit in, why not go and check out the survey yourself!
Just follow the link to the study here: http://opensourcesurvey.org/2017/
We will continue the task of educating the utopians, steemians, busy bees, esteemians, dtubers and all the other amazing steem blockchain habitants. At last, I just want to raise a toast to the brave new open source world, or rather, the new world order that has taken over the world by storm.
Let us join hands to gather the scattered bones of the open source giant and blow our lungs out to give it a new lease of life. Utopian.io is beggining to bring together the forgotten soldiers and organize them into a formidable army.
An open source army for the open source world.
I will continue to bring to you new information about open source projects and would love if you guys could grant me a patient audience. We'll meet again in the next episode of Open Source World. Till then bye bye!
Check out the previous installment of this blog on utopian.io:
Open Source World #1: The Accessibility Project
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors