For quite some time, I have felt some unease at the public discourse around OpenSource. In the past few years, we have seen a growing discourse around the sustainability and security of the large body of OpenSource software.

If we combine these two sets of data^1 we obtain a fascinating result^2.

  • 46% of all code out there, in every app, is maintained by hobbyists
  • 13,8% is maintained by “I sometimes get a bit of pocket money for my code”
  • 40% of all code out there is maintained by an industry-paid person

So, nearly 60% of all code being actively shipped in an app or product in the wild is hobbyist-maintained open-source.

See also this discussion on lobste.rs on the economics of the average (as in median) open source project:

https://lobste.rs/s/ftwkvo/hobbyist_maintainer_economic_gravity

To sum up, apparently most open source projects are small, and aren’t funded as paid work. And they matter because of their number, which has the effect that they make up a large part of all software in use.

  • Mavvik@lemmy.ca
    12·
    1 day ago

    When I stopped using proprietary software I noticed that I stopped fearing software updates. Proprietary software is always changing things in ways that dont necessarily improve the user experience, and often make it worse. My experience with OSS has (almost) always been the opposite, every update improves the software and either adds useful features or fixes old issues I’ve had. I think the only exception to this has been Firefox. I noticed this shift in thinking most obviously when I finally switched from Windows to Linux.