Hanging by the Thread: An Empirical Study of Donations in Open Source

Abstract

Open source plays a critical role in our software infrastructure. It is used in the creation of almost every product and makes it increasingly easy to create powerful software cheaply and quickly, which many companies benefit from. However, its importance and our dependence on it, are often not recognized [2]. Like all software projects, open source needs maintenance to fix bugs and adapt code to evolving technologies [12]. With increasing popularity, demands for maintenance and support work also rise, resulting in many requests and reported issues. How to supply all of the needed maintenance and development work is an open and sometimes controversial question.