Monetary Rewards for Open Source Software Developers

Open source software (OSS) has changed the landscape and economics of software industry. Large software firms are changing their business models to incorporate OSS for long term success. As a result of greater organizational involvement in OSS, there is an increased prevalence of reward options for OSS developers. However, introducing compensation/rewards to these ideologically motivated communities may threaten their sustainability. We don’t know the nature and type of rewards that would be acceptable in OSS developer community. Using grounded theory methodology, we extracted the concepts regarding developers’ perception of rewards in OSS community and how developers prefer to be compensated. This paper contributes to the literature of open source software development by (1) providing in depth examination of the developers’ intention to work on the OSS project if compensated (2) providing an initial theory for understanding when compensation helps an OSS project and when it hinders.