A Large Scale Survey of Motivation in Software Development and Analysis of its Validity

arXiv:2404.08303v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Context: Motivation is known to improve performance. In software development in particular, there has been considerable interest in the motivation of contributors to open source. Objective: We identify 11 motivators from the literature (enjoying programming, ownership of code, learning, self use, etc.), and evaluate their relative effect on motivation. Since motivation is an internal subjective feeling, we also analyze the validity of the answers. Method: We conducted a survey with 66 questions on motivation which …

abstract analysis and analysis arxiv code context contributors cs.lg cs.se development identify literature motivation open source ownership performance programming scale software software development survey type