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<p>Hello Maintainers, <br>
</p>
<p>TL;DR: How are people socialized to continue to maintain (open
source software)?</p>
<p>I wonder if you know any studies that analyze what makes
developers continue to maintain a piece of code, often without
pay. A lot of open source culture celebrates (libertarian)
freedom, creating new solutions and avoiding obligations (at least
according to Nafus, 2011 [1] ). Code/Software is provided "as is",
so there is no written social or (or even legal) contract to NOT
leave a project, yet people seem to go through a lot of pain to
maintain old code or adapt old code to changing infrastructure. I
thus wonder how and why they continue to maintain in the face that
a lot of the openly celebrated activities are somewhere else. <br>
</p>
<p>Jan</p>
<p>[1]: ‘Patches don’t have gender’: What is not open in open source
software, Dawn Nafus, 2011
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444811422887">http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444811422887</a></p>
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