a survey of open source participants reveals pretty much exactly what i would have expected: that programmers contribute to open source projects for reasons of “fun, skill, freedom and need”.

the register’s article sums it up as:

the chief motivations for donating time and effort to the open source community are varied, but include professional advancement; the need for mental stimulation; a personal belief that software ought to be open (not necessarily free); a chance to acquire new skills or refine existing ones; and practical needs for code which isn’t commercially available. i object to the slide that the boston consulting group (who carried out the survey) have published with the lead in line “who are these guys?” but in the face of the fact that the survey respondents were 98% male it’s difficult to argue with them from an accuracy point of view.

i wonder where all the women are? i would have thought that the desire to contribute to useful projects rather than commercial ones and being motivated by learning rather than by money were both fairly “feminine” characteristics, which is a stereotyped view in itself of course.

i can’t work out or offer a hypothesis for why the percentage of women in open source projects is so low, i would have expected it to be equal or higher than the percentage of female programmers.