We Live in a Society: Motivators for Contributions in an OSS Ecosystem

Abstract: Due to the increasing number of attacks targeting open source library ecosystems, assisting maintainers has become a top priority. This is especially important since maintainers are usually overworked. Although the motivation of Open Source developers has been widely studied, the extent to which maintainers assist libraries that they depend on is unknown. Surveying NPM developers, our early results indicate a difference in motivation between maintaining their own library (i.e., more person driven), as opposed to professional factors (i.e., focus on skills and expertise) when contributing to the software ecosystem. Finally, our thematic analysis shows different motivations and barriers developers face when contributing to the ecosystem. These results show that developers have different motivations and barriers depending on the role they play when making contributions to the ecosystem.