Developer Satisfaction Survey/2024/Open source
📖 Developer Satisfaction 2024 Report
🌍 Open source
edittl;dr
- Wikimedia's support of open source – Like last year, about half of respondents say the amount of money, time, and effort Wikimedia spends supporting the open source ecosystem is too little, with only 3% saying it's too much.
- Wikimedia as an open-source upstream – 81% say Wikimedia is a supportive ecosystem when considering it as a free and open source software upstream-up from 71% last year.
- Contribution uncertainty? Although 63% say Wikimedia contributes to third-party projects, similar to last year about a third of respondents are unsure whether or not Wikimedia does.
# Perception of Wikimedia Foundation support of open source
We asked survey takers their view of the amount of money, time, and effort Wikimedia spends supporting the open source ecosystem.
- The majority (51%) of respondents said the amount provided is too little
- 25% said the amount provided is "about right"
- 21% were unsure
- 3% said the amount provided is too much
# Perception of Wikimedia Foundation as an upstream
We asked survey takers, “What is your perception of Wikimedia as a free and open source software upstream?”
- The majority (80.6%) of respondents said that Wikimedia is a supportive ecosystem
- 13.3% were unsure
- 6.1% said that Wikimedia is not a supportive ecosystem
# Perception of Wikimedia Foundation's contributions to third-party projects
We asked survey takers their view of Wikimedia’s contribution to third-party projects.
- 50% of respondents said that Wikimedia makes minor contributions to third-party projects
- 33% were unsure
- 13% said that Wikimedia makes major contributions to third-party projects
- 4% said Wikimedia makes no contribution to third-party projects
# Feedback
We asked survey takers, “Please share any other feedback you may have about Wikimedia’s support for the open source community” Some themes emerged from the answers.
Visibility/Money
The largest combined theme in the responses (19%–12 out of 52) related to either the visibility of contributions, or the money we spend to support open source projects on which we depend.
Honestly, I wouldn't know what open-source projects the foundation financially supports. I would love to see a report on it.
Wikimedia should establish a rule that we tally all license costs we spend on SaaS services not driven by free software [...] and then spend the exact same amount of dollars to sustain free software projects.