Almost all software development projects rely heavily on open-source infrastructure. For instance, 94% of respondents surveyed in the 2017 GitHub Open Source Survey reported using open source software (OSS) professionally. Despite their importance, open-source projects are often abandoned due to maintainer disengagement. Thus, introducing new maintainers to established projects is critical to the long-term sustainability of open-source projects. While there is significant research about why people create new OSS projects, we have less of an understanding of the motivations behind joining and maintaining already-established OSS projects.

Open-source grey literature contrasts the thrill of creating a new project and solving problems with the burnout from triaging reported issues and responding to demands of seemingly entitled users. Furthermore, open source maintenance is becoming less attractive and sustainable often due to a high volume of pull requests and negative contribution feedback. Additionally, we suspect that the motivations behind open-source creation and maintenance work are different because volunteer literature suggests that volunteers’ motivations may depend on the type of volunteer work being done, like comparing human services volunteering to public benefit volunteering.

To better understand the motivations behind these types of work, our research is guided by the following question: How do the motivations behind doing creation and maintenance work differ for open-source contributors?

Through a literature review on volunteer motivation and surveys of open-source contributors, we can improve the understanding of contributor motivation and the effectiveness of community and research efforts to attract, support, and sustain developer engagement in OSS.