A collaboration between Github, The Linux Foundation, and some researchers from Harvard University conducted a survey to understand how organisations support Open Source - the 2024 Open Source Software Funding Survey. Compiling the results, they have concluded that the open source industry as a whole is worth USD 7.7B.
Caveats
- Target Demographic: Open Source Program Offices (or OSPOs, which are departments in an organisation that act as a liaison between the organisation and the open source community), Engineering/Product Heads, and any other individuals who understand their organisation's open source engagement.
- Distribution: the survey was distributed by the Linux Foundation and Github via newsletters and social media posts, via outreach to open source leaders, and via the TODO group, which is (kinda) a collaboration between various OSPOs
- Actual Response Demographic: Smaller firms are over-represented, firms with OSPOs are slightly under-represented, and regions outside North America and Europe are significantly under-represented.
- There is some estimation and extrapolation going on with calculating the value of labour contributed to open source projects as well as calculating the value of the entire industry from a subset of contributors responding to the survey.
Methodology
The survey asked respondents to estimate their labour and financial contributions to open source projects. Labour contributions come in the form of bug reports, issue maintenance, code contributions, code reviews, documentation, governance, security audits, and legal advice. Financial contributions comes from donations to foundations or projects, foundation membership fees, event sponsorship (by providing speakers, finances, marketing, logistics, or content curation), or research grants.
Findings
Organisational Contributions To Open Source
Out of 501 respondents, 159 reported non-zero values in either labour or financial contributions. The total value of this data from the respondents is estimated at USD 1.7B, which they extrapolate to USD 7.7B for all organisations that contribute, not just the respondents. A majority of this - 86% - comes in the form of labour, and the rest is financial.
By tuning the threshold for inclusion of contributors and estimated hourly wages, the estimates range from USD 2.9B to USD 10.1B, with the USD 7.7B figure coming from a commit count threshold of 5 and an hourly wage of USD 45.
A calibrated bootstrap approach is used to correct for the expected over-representation of major contributors in the responses.
Sinks
Out of all the labour contributed to open source projects, full-time employees contribute 56%, part time employees 28%, and contractors 16%. The money paid to contractors is 57% of the total financial contributions.
To avoid double-counting, the USD 7.7B figure excludes contracted labour values from organisations that report both contracted labour and finances directed to contractors.
Projects and maintainers receive 21% of the financial contributions, foundations and communities see 20%, and the rest goes to bug bounty platforms.
Challenges In Measurement
Organisations tend to not keep track of the details of their labour contributions to open source. This is exacerbated in massively decentralised organisations.
Prioritization
Organisations tend to allot either low amounts (<10%) or very high (>90%) proportions of their budget to open source contributions.
Incentives
Smaller organisations report a concern for project sustainability and a desire to give back to the community as a reason for open source contributions. Larger organisations, on the other hand, emphasize risk mitigation and promotion of standards/interoperability as their motivations. Many report a lack of resources as an inhibiting factor.
More than half of respondents recognize or reward employees that contribute to open source, with smaller organisations being more likely to. In addition, five-sixths of prospective hires to these companies value open source contribution.
Tax exemption status seems to be a minor reason for contribution, with 48% of respondents reporting that it plays no role at all.