Open Source programmers earn more and combat trade deficit

By David M Williams
Sunday, 13 April 2008 19:42

Opinion and Analysis

The findings from the fourth-quarter 2007 Open Source Industry and Community survey is out. The authors say the results show open source is effective in combating trade deficit and that IT professionals involved in open source earn more than their more proprietary colleagues. Let’s check it out. The survey was conducted by Australian based Waugh Partners, Pia and Jeff Waugh, between October and December 2007. Their data has been hinted at in the past, but finally this week they published their findings.

The report is available from Waugh Partners’ web site waughpartners.com.au and is freely redistributable under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Derivatives License which fundamentally means you are pre-approved to send it to anyone, publish it anywhere and quote from it, so long as attributions are cited. Perhaps slightly ironically the report was formatted using a proprietary package (Adobe InDesign) but that, of course, has no bearing on the substance of the report.

The survey was financially sponsored by NICTA – the [Australian] National ICT research centre as well as multi-national behemoths IBM and Fujitsu.

There were two specific surveys; the first was aimed at individuals who contribute to open source projects and communities – and in any capacity, not purely the actual development of software. This includes user group leaders, open source advocates and evangelists and more – even online Linux columnists. There were a total of 315 complete and legitimate responses received. An additional twelve incomplete responses were also included (and 44 discarded as not sufficiently complete.)

The second survey targeted companies that sell, support or service open source related technologies. There were 129 complete and legitimate responses. These companies self-identified as open source service and solution providers and over 50% said that open source makes up more than 70% of their revenue.

Compared to a market like the U.S. these numbers are very small. However, the Waughs estimate the respondents are equal to roughly 10% of the individuals and 25% of the companies in the Australian open source community. If they are correct in this then the sample size can be said to be statistically significant. The figure for companies is likely to be correct, but the assumption for individual numbers has been based on the membership of community organisations, mailing list subscriptions, user group attendance figures and other information.

I would have liked some more information on this; for instance, were attempts made to cross-reference the various sources and thereby identify each individual who is on a mailing list and is a member of a user group? Indeed, are user groups already counted as being community organisations (namely, organisations that make up the open source community)?

There’s no reason to dispute the numbers, please don’t get me wrong; just without the raw data it is hard for others to satisfy themselves the assertion of statistical relevancy is merited. A bit of open source working out wouldn’t go astray here.

The survey yields some interesting findings. It would be interesting if the Waughs can find any way of identifying if their results are specific to Australia or reflect global trends in open source also.

Let us see what these factual findings are, followed by some opinions expressed by survey respondents. Please read on.

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