<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Atul Pokharel at NYU has been working on the subject of why people *stop* maintaining things. I’m copying him here in case he wants to weigh in (I believe he’s on this list, also). <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">His terrific work spans from irrigation canals to open source software, and I know he’s spent a lot of time thinking about these questions of motivation, fairness, and the moral dimensions of maintenance (and commons) more generally. See for example <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2802653" class="">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2802653</a>. <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Andy</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 25, 2020, at 2:56 AM, Don Goodman-Wilson <<a href="mailto:don@maintainerati.org" class="">don@maintainerati.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I’m not aware of any studies here either, but I find myself also deeply intrigued by your question. I’m going to ask around and see if anything turns up. There may be a research opportunity here!<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">
<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Don GOODMAN-WILSON</div><div class="">Board, Maintainerati Foundation</div></div></div>
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<div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 24 Aug 2020, at 17:17, James Howison <<a href="mailto:jhowison@ischool.utexas.edu" class="">jhowison@ischool.utexas.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Possibly useful:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div>Trainer, E. H., Chaihirunkarn, C., Kalyanasundaram, A., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2015). From Personal Tool to Community Resource: What’s the Extra Work and Who Will Do It? Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work &#38; Social Computing, 417–430. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675172" class="">https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675172</a><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Although you are specifically asking about continuation motivations, rather than initial. I don't know of specific work on that, but I think it's a particularly interesting question, would love to know if anyone has a study that breaks out continuation (I guess a comparison between contributions in years 1-3 and beyond?). I think it would be crucial to break out motivations for those using the software themselves (esp. enabling revenue) vs those maintaining software they don't use anymore.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">There is a somewhat dated (but possibly still useful) summary of motivation research (together with a discussion of the importance of weighting stated motivations by actual time contributed, rather than laundry lists) in</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Crowston, K., Wei, K., Howison, J., & Wiggins, A. (2012). Free (Libre) Open Source Software Development: What We Know and What We Do Not Know. <i class="">ACM Computing Surveys</i>, <i class="">44</i>(2), Article 7. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2089125.2089127" class="">https://doi.org/10.1145/2089125.2089127</a></div><div class=""><div class="gmail-csl-bib-body" style="line-height:2;margin-left:2em">
<span class="gmail-Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1145%2F2089125.2089127&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Free%20(Libre)%20Open%20Source%20Software%20Development%3A%20What%20We%20Know%20and%20What%20We%20Do%20Not%20Know&rft.jtitle=ACM%20Computing%20Surveys&rft.volume=44&rft.issue=2&rft.aufirst=Kevin&rft.aulast=Crowston&rft.au=Kevin%20Crowston&rft.au=Kangning%20Wei&rft.au=James%20Howison&rft.au=Andrea%20Wiggins&rft.date=2012&rft.pages=Article%207"></span></div></div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">James Howison<div class=""><br class=""><div class="">Associate Professor</div><div class="">School of Information</div><div class="">University of Texas at Austin</div><div class=""><a href="http://james.howison.name/" target="_blank" class="">http://james.howison.name</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br class=""></div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 2:09 AM Bastien <<a href="mailto:bzg@bzg.fr" class="">bzg@bzg.fr</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">jan <<a href="mailto:dittrich.c.jan@gmail.com" target="_blank" class="">dittrich.c.jan@gmail.com</a>> writes:<br class="">
<br class="">
> I thus wonder how and why they continue to maintain in the face that<br class="">
> a lot of the openly celebrated activities are somewhere else.<br class="">
<br class="">
In my case (being a FLOSS maintainer for ~10 years), my motivation<br class="">
evolved from<br class="">
<br class="">
(1) a moral sense of giving back to other FLOSS maintainers<br class="">
(2) the mere fun of being a maintainer (and decide things)<br class="">
(3) a certain sense of pride<br class="">
<br class="">
to <br class="">
<br class="">
(1) the moral sense of giving back (still important)<br class="">
(2) the moral sense of social commitment to the community<br class="">
<br class="">
-- <br class="">
Bastien<br class="">
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