[DZone Research] OSS in Personal and Professional Projects

This article is part of the Key Research Findings from the DZone Guide to Open Source: Democratizing Development.

Introduction

As part of 2018 DZone Guide to Open Source, we surveyed 629 software professionals about various aspects of developing and using open source software. In this article, dive into the stats around how developers use open source in both personal and professional coding projects. 

Why Open Source

Among our respondents, 69% use open-source software in their personal projects and 88% use it at work. That's a considerable number. To get a more detailed picture of why and how developers use open-source software, let's explore how our community, both at home and the office, interacts with OSS solutions and the communities around them.

When development organizations are looking to choose an open-source solution, the most important factors all dealt with organizational and development efficiency. The top concern respondents' companies take into account are cost savings (69%), development time (64%), time to integrate into existing software (64%), and security (50%). Interestingly, however, when asked on an individual level what factors influence their choice of OSS for a work project, developers told us: reduction of development costs (20%), no vendor lock-in (15%), and a welcoming community (13%). It thus appears that community interactions are far more important for individual developers than the organizations for which they work. And, when asked what makes OSS an attractive choice for their personal projects, respondents' answers were identical to their professional reasons for choosing OSS: reduction in development costs (19%); no vendor lock-in (14%); welcoming communities (14%).

Challenges in Open Source

So, developers use open-source solutions for much the same reasons at work as they do in their spare time. But do the challenges they face in their use of OSS on the job compare to the challenges they encounter while hacking away at home? Those respondents who told us that they use open source at work reported three main challenges that face they consistently: unclear documentation (27%); lack of documentation (25%); lack of outside resources (17%). Thus, the main professional concerns of individual, OSS-based developers are all community-centric. When we asked developers working on personal projects this same question, the results were almost a mirror image. Those respondents who use open source in personal projects reported four main challenges: unclear documentation (26%); lack of documentation (25%); lack of outside resources (17%); hostile community (12%).

Conclusion

While it may seem a matter of common sense that developers use OSS in personal and professional projects for the same reasons, it is nonetheless interesting to note how important a role the open source community plays in both types of projects. Given that, in the following article in this series, we'll examine how developers interact with open source communities.

This article is part of the Key Research Findings from the DZone Guide to Open Source: Democratizing Development.