Writing at CNET, Matthew Broersma reports on a study released by the International Institute of Infonomics that 'exposes' open source developers — the motives, habits and personal data. The study also looks at the role of open source software in government and business. Broersma writes . . .

“According to a new survey, open-source software developers are mostly men in their twenties, and they vastly favor the Debian operating system distribution. The “Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)” report also found that although many might not make a living from their open-source activities, they spend a serious amount of time on them . . . “

“The more striking of the survey's findings are those relating to developers' personal characteristics: They are 98.9 percent male, and 41.4 percent are single. Another 18.6 percent have partners but are not living with them, while 18.8 percent have live-in partners and another 21.1 percent are married . . . “

“Open-source software has long been considered primarily an activity of hobbyists, rather than paid work, and the survey bears this perception out. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents spend 10 hours per week or less on open-source work, with 23 percent spending only two hours per week. Nine percent spend between 20 and 40 hours per week on open source, with 7 percent spending more than 40 hours a week. . . . “

“The developers were mostly involved in networking and Web services projects, and the largest proportion–48 percent–preferred the Debian operating system. Red Hat was a distant second, with 13.8 percent, followed by Mandrake with 9.8 percent and SuSE with 9.2 percent . . . ”

“Gnome and KDE, Unix-based desktop environments, were closely matched in popularity, with Gnome at 32.4 percent and KDE at 30.2 percent . . . “

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The report is available here.

 
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