Who Are OpenSource developers? 77
aCC writes "Read on Heise (german) about an online questionary (english) that is being done by a group of the Technical University of Berlin to find out more about the nature of OpenSource developers. Quite interesting (it has realtime stats). It needs some more international entries though... so, go slashdotters go!"
Bad Dreams (Score:2)
Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
The FAQ for everyone when this site is /.'d (Score:4)
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I take part in the individual survey?
I don't want to answer all your questions. Can I take part at all?
May I refer other software developers to your site?
Who are you?
There are many other studies about that topic! Why another one?
What kind of answers to you expect?
Why is the inquiry not in my language?
I'm a bit concerned about my personal data. What do you do with these informations?
Will the results be published in any form?
Question: Can I take part in the individual survey?
Answer: Of course. However, you must be involved in any open source/free software project.
Question: I don't want to answer all your questions. Can I take part at all?
Answer: Yes. All answers are optional. Please choose the option "no entry" if you dont want to give an answer to a specific question.
Question: May I refer other software developers to your site?
Answer: Definitly yes. We highly dependend on the amount of people taking part in our survey. Every open source/free software developer is welcome.
Question: Who are you?
Answer: We are a group of computer science students at the Technical University of Berlin. This survey is part of our studies, trying to get an empirical picture about the social and economic aspects of open source / free software developers.
Question: There are many other studies about that topic! Why another one?
Answer: Our study is digging deeper into the social aspects of open source developers. Therefore, we try to extend the value of former studies to get a even better and detailed result.
Question: What kind of answers to you expect?
Answer: The main target is to get an overview about the geographic location of open source developers. This can be socialy, economicaly and politicaly highly important. Finally, we want to take a closer look at the current developer scene.
Question: Why is the inquiry not in my language?
Answer: e translated the inquiry to all the languages we speak ourself. However, if your perferred language is not available, support us by translating the survey to the language of your choice.
Question: I'm a bit concerned about my personal data. What do you do with these informations?
Answer: Please take a look at our privacy policy.
Question: Will the results be published in any form?
Answer: Yes, we will publish our results on the WIDI-Homepage.
At First Glance (Score:2)
Of course other notables such as Guido von Rossum and Theo de Raadt come to mind, but those are exceptions...
No `New Zealand' in country list (Score:1)
Re:No `New Zealand' in country list (Score:1)
Re:At First Glance (Score:2)
Waiting for /. effect to happen ... (Score:1)
The story has only 10 comments the moment I write this, and already the server is responding _very_ slowly. But heck, you could expect that if somebody is shouting 'go slashdotters go!'
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Slashdot Skew (Score:3)
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:2)
And Scandinavia is the birthplace of opensource? Sure, Linux originated in Finland, but free software (free as in beer and speech) had been around much longer. So what is considered to be the first opensource project?
I'm really just curious. Any references or links (like to the poll at UIUC) would be great.
-Tobi
! I am an open-source devver ! (Score:3)
Re:Frenzy (Score:1)
slashdotted already? (Score:1)
Warning: Too many connections in db_mysql.inc on line 73
Database error: pconnect(db.berlios.de, widi, $Password) failed.
MySQL Error: ()
Session halted.
I'd ask for a mirror, but for data harvestation, that'd sorta backfire.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
Re:Slashdot Skew (Score:3)
Being on a German site is much more likely to skew the results, and it has so far.
Fav Editor (Score:5)
no_entry
of course
naturly
there are no others
the others are good as well
JIHAD!!
What are these others of which you speek.
Troll (Score:2)
Your hardware company [slashdot.org] or the stock brokerage firm [slashdot.org]?
I'm really looking forward to seeing how the homosexuality numbers play out.
Too obvious - you need to be a bit more subtle when trolling.
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
Interesting survey (Score:2)
That would be a cool survey. I've always been curious about why other people like computer science. I love the thrill of programming, of being faced with a challenge and trying to figure out if I can pull it off. I like building things that other people will use, and I really like open source because I see other people volunteering time and effort to make cool software. I wonder what other people's reasons are.
(.. and the site could use a little usability tweaking, too. But it's okay.)
An entry to look for (Score:4)
Nickname (max. 24 characters): Billgatus of Borg : 1955
Nationality: United States
Country you actually live in: United States
Year of Birth
Gender: male (I think)
Top Level Email Domain: username@server.com
Other languages: no entry - no entry - no entry - no entry
Profession: world dominator (junior level)
Qualification: college graduate (sort of)
Are you being paid for developing free software/open-source? no, for ripping it off
Have you profited from developing free software/open-source? no, from ripping it off
Do you think there are enough free software-related opportunities (jobs, political & social support) in your country or is it better abroad? it is ok in my country Why? we need those guys to produce good software for us.
Does your boss know that you're developing Free Software/Open Source? No (He even does not know what the GPL is)
Do you like you job ? I do it only because of the money
Approx. Yearly Income: >>>>>>>>>>>>70.000 EUR
How many hours a week do you spend developing Open Source/Free Software? no entry
Number of Free Software/Open Source Projects you are involved in: -1
Which of these languages/tools are you experienced with? BASIC - Visual Basic - C (sharp)
Favorite Operating System / Distribution: Windows OS
Favorite desktop: Windows
Favorite editor: Write - No more editors should exist
Open source of free software? doesn't matter, as long as not GPL
I am an Open Source developer! (Score:3)
Many computer users have experience a phenomenon known as "crashing" when using the popular "Netscape" browser from America Online Corporation. I can count myself among these frustrated individuals. Many times I have come just short of putting my fist through the screen when this lousy program crashes. Some people just give up and switch to Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer, but I am very stubborn when it comes to these things... I happen to like my Unix operating system, and except for Netscape it has always run perfectly for me. Furthermore, I am known as an optimistic person - I have always tried to look on the bright side of life. I am also an engineer and student of physics.
One night after Netscape crashed for about the tenth time that evening, wheels began spinning in my head. For some time I had been searching for the "bright side" of Netscape's crashing. It was a difficult and troublesome search, but suddenly a lightbulb appeared over my head (not literally, of course).
Electrical energy!
It is a little known fact that when used RAM (Random Access Memory) is released by a computer's software, a short burst of electrical energy is discharged by the RAM module into the surrounding air. I had read about this fact this in an obscure scientific computing journal, and at the time I had merely stuck it in the back of my mind as useless trivia and I had forgotten about it until this moment of insight. As I considered the large amount of memory a typical running copy of Netscape consumes, I realized that when the program exited, it freed a huge amount of computer memory and could possibly generate a tiny, yet noticeable, electrical shock.
Intrigued, I removed the case from my computer, and held my electrical measuring tool near one of the two protruding RAM modules. After I few test runs with Netscape, I realized that a normal program exit generated about .7 volt, whereas a drastic crash could generate as much as 1.3 volts! After some studying of the operating system source code, I found that all the memory being used by the program is not immediately released when a program exits normally - it is held in what is known as a "cache" which often results in faster loading time if the program is started again. On the other hand, when a program aborts unexpectedly (usually a "crash") the memory is released immediately. Of course I am leaving out some details here, as my goal here is to convince the reader of the general importance of my invention, and not to bog you down with technical details. Suffice to say, a crash generates a greater electrical discharge than a normal program exit does.
By the time I had finished my measurements, the hour was late and I was growing weary. I lit my pipe and rested in my easy chair, and I pondered how I could best harness this energy, which was being wasted by the repeated crashing of my nefarious web browser. I have always felt that smoking fine tabacco in a pipe helps the mind work, and this night was no exception. Within an hour I had a plan drawn up for a device that could capture the wasted electrical energy. Satisfied with my drawings, I headed off to bed. At this time, I merely thought I would be doing my part to prevent waste... if only I knew then what I know now!
The next morning I was roused early from my slumber by the noisy chirping of a robin. Preparing a steaming cup of coffee, I headed off to my workshop. I am a collector of gadgets of all sorts, and my workshop reflects this fact. Heaped in every corner are objects whose original function has long ago been forgotten, and are useless to the average man on the street. With a sense of duty in my heart, I set forth and gathered the parts I believed useful for my device. As the sun marched on its eternal path across the sky, I soldered, cursed, and hammered my device into working condition.
Returning home later that day, I installed the energy-gathering device on my computer and plugged a small lamp into the device's socket. I launched Netscape and started to browse a favorite website of mine, which happens to make extensive use of Java and cascading style sheets. In no time at all Netscape had indeed crashed. After a few more minutes of browsing and crashing, the small lamp began to beam brightly. I smiled, immensely satisfied with my invention.
With my mission accomplished, I unplugged all the cords from my computer and proceeded to return it to the desk from whence I had removed it the previous night. Cursing the endless amounts of plugs and cords required to operate a modern computer I finished placing it back on the desk and powered it on. While waiting for the computer to boot, I puzzled over the extra power cord in my hand. As far as I could tell the computer was running fine. Despite this, I knew the extra cord was supposed to be plugged into the computer somewhere.
Annoyed, I turned on my flashlight and examined the back of the computer. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the computer was not plugged in! I shook my head as if to clear cobwebs from it and looked once again. Sure enough, the monitor was plugged in, but the computer itself was not plugged into the wall socket. In fact, it was plugged quite sturdily into the device which I myself had built to gather the energy wasted by the RAM modules! Just to be certain, I unplugged the monitor and placed it aside. The computer still ran. I nearly fainted, but determined to keep a scientific mind, I took the computer outdoors, where I was certain there would be no hidden electrical sockets to power it. Again, it ran with no power source!
As I write this, I sit in my workshop among several new computers which I have also tested with my device and have received similar results. At the present moment I am still trying to understand its workings, and have disassembled it with the utmost care, documenting and photographing each part. Yet despite all my efforts to the contrary, it seems I have truly invented an Infinite Energy Device.
Ahead of me I realize I face a life of limitless wealth and international acclaim. This invention is unsurpassed in its importance, rivaled only by the discovery of fire by the earliest cave man. Yet I still wonder... will this device spend more time serving the forces of evil than the forces of good? Already, I have noticed black helicopters hovering overhead and men in military uniforms hiding in the bushes. Why? What are they here for? Only time will tell.
Respectfully,
Alfred Windhall III [mailto]
Inventor
Re:No `New Zealand' in country list (Score:1)
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
If you lived there wouldn't there be 'here'? as in "I know, because I live here!"
be sure to figure it out, and let us know
TEN
MODERATORS: (Score:1)
~
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
Maybe you should come to Finland and tell that to the teachers. It's been a while since i was in school (8 years now) but way back then, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland (or how its spelled in english, Islanti in finnish anyway ... ) where all part of Scandinavia.
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Re:I am an Open Source developer! (Score:1)
~
check again (Score:1)
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:2)
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:3)
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Matthijs
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
As a fellow Finn who's somewhat older than you I can tell that the teachers will tell you whatever the general political atmosphere at the time suggests.
When I went to school (20 years now) the Soviet Union was still our neighbour and both history and civics lessons (yhteiskuntaoppi) were taught accordingly; not pointing out the well known fact that we were a society living figuratively speaking under-the-gun of the USSR, for instance. No mention of the flaws of the socialist system. Not criticising the invasion of Hungary and so on.
My guess is that the history and civics are being taught with an equal skew. Only now the skew is to the right. After the collapse of the Soviet regime and joining to the EU with barely half of the population supporting the idea in the referendum every effort has been made to portray Finland as much as a western country as possible. Even though the history is not probably being re-written it's being taught with a different agenda: to prepare people to accept further integration with EU, NATO and god-knows-what. Assigning Finland to the Scandinavian countries is one of these fallacies.
To me any skew, whether to the right or to the left, is abhorrent and has led me to realise that you cannot trust the state media nor the school system. Too bad in Finland you are not allowed to educate your own children but you have to send them over to the state brainwashing machine. All I can do is to tell the children not to take anything at a face value and question everything the teachers say (which, incidentally, got me in trouble with the local school board).
Re:Bad Dreams (Score:1)
I don't think that just living within the area described is sufficient to call someone an American, without the accompanying citizenship. Plenty of people who are not Americans have taken up residence, even if only temporarily.
An alternate (better?) definition might be "Someone who is a citizen of any of the countries comprising 'the Americas'" (That covers all of the Canadian and Mexican US-immigrants who I just excluded, and includes most other people in this hemisphere who should be considered 'American' :)
Re:Waiting for /. effect to happen ... (Score:1)
I wonder if that's good enough a reason for the Germans to sue Hemos for damages?
I'm sure the U.S.A. would have no problems in extraditing this evil hacker.
Re:At First Glance (Score:1)
Don't forget to weigh the values by population!
Persistence of Vision (Score:2)
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Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
Linus may be from a Scandanavian country, but free software started at MIT.
You are at least as confused about this as you are what your employer does. (See the highly ranked comment about the stock brokerage firm and the hardware company.)
Reminder kids, anybody can make up numbers! :)
one word, misconfigured... (Score:1)
dumbasses
Surprised (Score:1)
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:2)
Oh, great. Now Microsoft will accuse us as being cross-dressing communists rather than commies of the ordinary stripe.
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Call for DDoS? (Score:1)
Defining the "enemy" (Score:2)
Looking at the stats... (Score:3)
Strangely, the typical OS developer is 21-22 years old male (98%). Well, perhaps 21-27. That means not much experience. 33% are students, so perhaps that explains it. But then, 37% are university graduates/masters, plus 4% PhDs.
78% are not paid for developing OS. This isn't nice. But 30% report having profited professionally.
3.5% do not work (I belong to that sad part). I just wonder which option all the students have reported...
The yearly income distribution is rather even in the entire range, perhaps about 30,000-40,000 EUR per year on average. I think US salaries are higher than european; it would be nice to have per-country statistics too.
They seem to be spending typically Typically they use Debian, although SuSE and RedHat are not far behind. 33% favour KDE, and 23% Gnome. Umm, 11% Windows, 7% "pure tex"? 36% are masochists who use vi (can this really be true?), while emacs has 28%.
Hmm, the site seems to be slashdotted, so I can't summarize the last page, "computer abilities".
Bit Biased (Score:1)
Till after everyone on slashdot has had a go.
I question where they have linked their web page from, I wouldn't be suppriesed if it was mainly *.de servers
Robert
summary of the stats (Score:1)
age groups, ethnicity, income, and education levels.
But we are all males
.. (Score:1)
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microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
Re:Bad Dreams (Score:1)
An alternate (better?) definition might be "Someone who is a citizen of any of the countries comprising 'the Americas'" (That covers all of the Canadian and Mexican US-immigrants who I just excluded, and includes most other people in this hemisphere who should be considered 'American' :)
believe me, you don't have to worry about that one. We're just as pleased as can be not to be thought of as 'Americans'.
couldn't resist...;)
Mother tongue... (Score:2)
;-)
other surveys? (Score:2)
OpenBSD has female hackers (Score:3)
-- Pure FTP server [pureftpd.org] - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
Not perfect (Score:1)
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Re:Not perfect (Score:1)
Here we go again:
There were already critizisms about that survey in the heise forum. My major points are that the survey: - is very focussed on Unix (I write OSS for BeOS)
- has two editors only?
- only asks whicht desktop you're using but not what you're developing for
- assumes you write only for one OS
- doesn't ask that much about your motivation.
- doesn't ask that much about what kind of software you write
- doesn't aks wether you write alone or in a team and if latter, how big the team is.
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Re:An entry to look for (Score:1)
This should be:
Favorite editor: Word - No more editors should exist
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:1)
The stats on gender confirm what I found recently by investigating freshmeat a bit: there are almost no female developers. The US is even below average.
I am missing some social questions that might be interesting (married ? childs ?).
Re:Persistence of Vision (Score:1)
Database users, or more accurately user connections, are probably the biggest resource hog from the database engines perspective. As an example, Sybase Adaptive Server requires ~80 byte for a lock resource, a few hundred byte per open object and and maybe a couple kb per open database. But every single configured user connection requires ~ 80kb of memory (figures from memory, they could be off).
Now you may think that 80kb is not much, when you multiply this however with 1000, we're suddenly talking 80 Mb. Those are 80 Mb ripped out from the database cache.
Now, the cache is the most fundamental concept, since no database of which I know of processes the data directly on disk, but rather in memory. So a (data)page has to be read from disk to be processed. It does also have to be written to disk, if the page changed (so called dirty page) and space is required in the cache.
Physical disk I/Os are the most darned expensive thing to expect from a relational database in terms of resources and the longer a page is available in the cache, the less likely it is, that it has to be reread from disk.
Now, memory parameters can never be configured dynamically, you can't just tear a chunk of memory out of the cache, while the db engine is operational. So memory related parameters must be configured upfront or require a reboot of the database.
The aim of a good dba is to find exactly the value(s) that not hinder operation (aka: every client can connect if he issues a request), but no configured client connections lie ideal for a long time.
This is a very boiled down version of what is internally happens in a data server, but it should provide you with the idea, why you can't configure a db in expectance that the /. readership is made aware of its existence on a sunny day.
editors (Score:1)
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:1)
Missing A Favorite Question... (Score:1)
Which is...
As long as people stop being open-source developers the moment they become parents, the whole open-source idea is going to have difficulty getting to be a fully mainstream idea.
This has been discussed on /. before [slashdot.org], but open-source development tends to center around open-source developers' interests. Children are even more demanding than open-source projects, though, leaving little time for that coding. If you checked the stats from this survey, you will discover that over 75% of open-source developers don't get paid for their work. If they're OK with this, then fine - but it strongly suggests they are doing it on their own time. That time tends to get eaten up when there are children in the family.
It's too bad - I had high hopes for this survey when I noticed the title ... "Who Is Doing It?"
Re:Similar Poll at University of Illinois (Score:1)
To make a sweeping generalization, I would expect to see fewer women in OS-level projects than in higher-level projects (based solely on extrapolation from population of a few undergraduate courses several years ago). Therefore, I would expect that 1% (2/200) to be a lower bound on the overall distribution of women in open source.
I know, I know, it's not really open source unless it's an operating system. ;-)
Re:Missing A Favorite Question... (Score:1)
I can only sadly say it is too late for it! Next time ;-)
Re:No `New Zealand' in country list (Score:1)
Ahem, Germans use plain old lexicographic order as well
Re:At First Glance (Score:1)
Don't mix the partial results (now) with the end results. The partial results are as they are becouse of some reasons.
We did the beta-testing with www.barrapunto.com (the Spanish Slasdot) two weeks ago and then started to post on non-English weblogs all around Europe last week. We wanted to make sure that everything works ok.
Last Thursday it was posted on Heise.de and over 700 entries came (mostly Germans, Austrians and Swiss)... and today on Slashdot.
I hope at the end we will have a realistic approach of the nationality distribution...
It doesn't bother me much who's first as I'm part of the research group at the TU Berlin and I'm Spanish... and sorrily we are not top!! (but who knows in future ;-)...)
Apologies (Score:1)
Apache allowed 150 connections
MySQL only 100 connections
at the same time
This has been fastly reconfigured.
Another time sorry for the inconvenience. It was my first Slashdot efect :-)
Grex
Re:At First Glance (Score:1)
Thanx for your comment.
Re:Surprised (Score:1)
Maybe as times goes on and the number of survey entries goes up, the numbers will change to reflect this.
Yes. You can now see you were right. And I think the stats will get better in the next few days ;-).
Re:Defining the "enemy" (Score:1)
Tell people in the street about Open Source and what will they tell you... they'll tell you free software developers are anarchists, communists, teenies and so on... is that what we can see in the results?
boy kids start early... (Score:1)
on a side note... the editors might want to make a comment about how if people are going to visit the site, they should take it seriously as it is an educational research survey.
Re:who are open source developers? (Score:2)
I've to answer you, that Widi (the software under which this survey runs) itself is released under the GPL... so we're also Open Source developers.
You can download it from http://developer.berlios.de/projects/widi/ [berlios.de]
The problem was just a bad configuration of MySQL as I've already told in a comment. We apologizes for it... it has been our first Slashdot efect and you know you can't ensure your software runs well untill you test it :-). Thanx for your comprehension.
Re:Interesting survey (Score:1)
I hope our research (in which Widi is only one part of it) will give good results on the "who" question, so the question "why" can be resolved in near future.
Thanx for your comment.
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:1)
living in:
USA 1054 + Canada 185 + Mexico 14 = North America 1253
but the continents part says: North America 1106
I think, there's something not quite right here......
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:1)
There are per-contry stats for every country with more then 15 developers. We thought this could give a nice perspective of what is different in each country.
While the survey is becoming more and more entries, the number of countries with more than 15 Open Source developers is increasing rapidly :-). Just enjoy the results.
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:1)
The point is I got Mexico as "Latin America" and therefore I did not include it in "North America"... that's why you can see as subject of the box "Continents".
I'll fix the problem when the Slashdot effect is over :-)...
Thanx for your comprehension.
Re:Bit Biased (Score:1)
I hope we will get at the end a realistic picture of where the developers come ;-)...
In our final work we will also give a list of news sites where we have posted our press releases to show we have posted it in the world wide most important news sites.
Thanx for your comments.
Re:other surveys? (Score:1)
http://widi.berlios.de/links.php3 [berlios.de].
There you will find other tools and surveys we have found.
I want you also to notice, that Widi (the survey) is only part of our research. We have several other sources that will converge in our final results.
Re:No `New Zealand' in country list (Score:1)
Re:editors (Score:1)
Re:Looking at the stats... (Score:2)
Per-country stats are available now (I don't know if they always were or not).
Sesame Street Flashback (Score:2)
"Who are the hackers in your neighborhood?"
"In your neighborhood..."
"In your neighborhooooooooddd"
"Who are the hackers in your neighborhood"
"They're the people coding apps all day"
Socialists (Score:1)
Re:Bad Dreams (Score:1)
Uh, I don't live in the USA so I really don't care what they do to themselves as long as they leave it all on their side of the border...