自由开源软件(FOSS)的支薪与志愿贡献者之间的差异

There's a lot of debate these days about the impact of the increasing number of paid developers in FOSS communities that started as volunteer efforts and still have significant numbers of volunteers. Evangelia Berdou's PhD thesis "Managing the Bazaar: Commercialization and peripheral participation in mature, community-led Free/Open source software projects" contains a contains a wealth of information and insights about this topic.

这些日子，对于FOSS社区支薪开发人员的数量越来越多的影响有许多争论，这些社区是由志愿者努力创办的，而且现在仍然有数量可观的志愿者。Evangelia Berdou的博士论文“管理集市：成熟、社区主导的自由/开源软件项目的商品化和外围参与”包含关于这一论题的丰富资料和深刻见解。

Berdou conducted interviews with members of the GNOME and KDE projects. She found that paid developers are often identified with the core developer group which is responsible for key infrastructure and often make a large number of commits. Furthermore, she suggested that the groups may have different priorities: "whereas [paid] developers focus on technical excellence, peripheral contributors are more interested in access and practical use".

Berdou对GNOME和KDE项目的成员进行了采访。她发现，支薪开发人员往往被认为等同于负责关键基础结构的核心开发小组，并且经常作出大量提交。而且，她还认为各团体可能有不同的优先考虑的事项：“[支薪]开发人员集中在技术优势，而外围贡献者更感兴趣的是存取访问和实际使用。”

Based on these interviews, she formulated the following hypotheses which she subsequently analyzed in more detail:

根据这些采访，她明确提出了下列的假设，随后进行更详细的分析：

1. Paid developers are more likely to contribute to critical parts of the code base.

支薪开发人员更有可能为编码基数的关键部分作出贡献。

1. Paid developers are more likely to maintain critical parts of the code base.

支薪开发人员更有可能维护编码基数的关键部分。

1. Volunteer contributors are more likely to participate in aspects of the project that are geared towards the end-user.

志愿贡献者更有可能参与项目的各个方面，面向最终用户。

1. Programmers and peripheral contributors are not likely to participate equally in major community events.

程序员和外围贡献者不太可能平等参与社区活动。

Berdou found all hypotheses to be true for GNOME but only hypothesis two and four were confirmed for KDE.

Berdou发现，所有假设对于GNOME都是真实的，但对于KDE却只有假设2和4被证实。

In the case of GNOME, Berdou found that hired developers contribute to the most critical parts of the project, that they maintained most modules in core areas and that they maintained a larger number modules than volunteers. Two important differences were found in KDE: paid developers attend more conferences and they maintain more modules.

就GNOME来说，Berdou发现雇用的开发人员贡献该项目的最关键部分，还发现他们维护核心范围内的大多数模块而且维护的模块数量比志愿者大得多。在KDE中找到两个重要的差别：支薪开发人员参加更多的会议并且维护更多模块。

Berdou's research contains a number of important insights:

Berdou的研究包含若干重要的见解：

• Corporate contributions are important because paid developers contribute a lot of changes, and they maintain core modules and code.
• 社团法人的捐赠是重要的，因为支薪开发人员贡献许多变化，并且维护核心模块和代码。
• While it's clear that the involvement of paid contributors is influenced by the strategy of their company, Berdou wonders whether another reason why they often contribute to core code is because they "develop their technical skills and their understanding of the code base to a greater extent than volunteers who usually contribute in their free time". It's therefore important that projects provide good documentation and other help so volunteers can get up to speed quickly.
• 很清楚，支薪贡献者的加入是受其公司战略的影响，但Berdou对另一个原因感到疑惑，他们的贡献为什么往往是在核心代码，是否因为他们要“发展自己的专门技能，而且对编码基数的理解范围比通常在闲暇时才出力的志愿者要大得多。”因此，重要的是，项目要提供良好的文档和其他帮助，志愿者才能迅速赶上。
• Since many volunteers cannot afford to attend community events, projects should provide travel funds. This is something I see more and more: for example, Debian funds some developers to attend Debian conference and the Linux Foundation has a grant program to allow developers to attend events.
• 由于许多志愿人员负担不起参加社区活动的费用，项目应当提供旅费。我认为这是越来越重要的事情：例如，Debian为出席Debian会议的部分开发人员提供资金，Linux基金会也有补助计划，让开发人员得到参加活动的机会。
• Paid developers often maintain modules they are not paid to directly contribute to. A reason for this is that they continue to maintain modules in their spare time when their company tells them to work on other parts of the code.
• 支薪开发人员常常维护那些没有直接报酬的模块。其原因是，当他们的公司要他们从事编码的其他部分时，他们就在业余时间继续维护这些模块。

Personally, I'm also wondering why there are some significant differences between GNOME and KDE. For example, about 67% of contributors where paid to work on GNOME whereas only 38% were paid to work on KDE. Why do some projects attract more commercial involvement whereas other projects continue to be mostly volunteer based?

就个人而言，我也想知道为什么在GNOME和KDE之间有一些显著差异。例如，在GNOME的贡献者中，大约有67％支付薪水，而KDE只有38％。为什么有些项目吸引更多的商业投入，而其他项目继续以志愿者为主呢？