Why contribute? Scratch your own itch!

Scratch you own itch, and help others while at it!

Why do people contribute to Open Source projects?

The question is as old as Open Source and its predecessor Free Software: Why do people contribute? We re-asked the oldie-but-goodie, and got results that confirm the old adage about scratching your own itch.

Fixing work or personal needs

The most popular answer? Fixing work or personal needs. It got 44 %, nearly half the votes. You simply need to get the job done, and there is an Open Source project that almost does it already.

In the case of MariaDB Server, it could be a missing feature in Oracle compatibility. You might be ready to migrate off Oracle Database onto MariaDB Server with its Oracle compatibility mode (see SQL_MODE=ORACLE), but this one piece of syntactic sugar is missing.

Learning and skill development

Number two is more long term: Learning and skill development. It got 31 %. You want to prepare for the future – so that you can fix your work or personal needs later. So that you can understand how things work. So that you get better at what you’re doing.

In the case of MariaDB Server, we have cultivated Google Summer of Code students for over a decade. In this case, you get mentoring guidance from us and are certain to achieve the goal of learning and skill development.

Giving things back (genuine helpfulness)

The borders are of course fluid – but many contribute out of the goodness of their hearts, so to speak. “I got so much for free from Open Source software, I should be giving something back.” – that’s perhaps the logic behind the answer Contributing to shared tools, which got 13 %.

And, mind you, we allowed for only one answer whereas in real life, answers may be multiple. When asking Monty why he originally released MySQL as Open Source in 1995, his reply has always been “We had been using Free Software for so long, and we wanted to give something back.” Of course, the entire database was written to scratch his own itch, so he would clearly tick several of the boxes.

Reputation and helping yourself

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the remaining two answers, Career advancement with 6% and Networking and recognition with another 6%. Your GitHub profile is your public display of your value to the Open Source community, amongst other roles it’s playing.

In the case of the MariaDB community, the reputation gained by writing contributions have always been the ticket to get credibility in front of the senior developers who affect the recruitment decisions. And even if you’re not looking for the next job, a patch that you contribute is truly an effective way of illustrating what you want to make happen – in case you wish to influence the roadmap and task allocation in any Open Source project.