Hi Hoda, You should clarify the word "free". It is true that contributions to open-source software do not come with direct monetary compensation. However, there are other benefits that you get by contributing. For example, if you are the user of the software you naturally want it to be better. If you maintain a proprietary branch of a project, you might want to contribute to the public branch to minimize maintenance (just like Sun does with StarOffice and Google does with MySQL). So it's not all free. Actually it's far from it. In fact I cannot even imagine a contributor with no interest in the software being developed. There is always a benefit, direct or indirect. For many open source contributors their contributions become their resumes and they can get much higher salaries than those without such a public profile.
If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the book "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond (http://www.amazon.com/Cathedral-Bazaar-Musings-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0596001088/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221243969&sr=8-1). It is small - around 250 pages - but great. Sorry, can't help you with contributor mailing list. Yegor 2008/9/12 Baytiyeh, Hoda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hello, > > I am a Ph.D. student in Instructional Technology at the University of > Tennessee. I am conducting research about what motivates people to > contribute to Open Source Software for free. OpenOffice is one of the > applications I am targeting in my research. I would like to send my survey to > people who are involved in the development and not to the users. Is there any > mailinglist for all the contributors in OpenOffice that I can use? > > Your help is highly appreciated. > Thanks, > Hoda. > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
