Typical Australian open source developers are 26 years old and spend their days being bored in Canberra. Despite that, free software enthusiasts have more sex and earn more money than you might expect, a new survey reveals.
At linux.conf.au, Waugh Partners offered a preview of some of the results from its Australian Open Source Industry & Community Census 2007, focusing on self-identified members of the open source community.
Responses from 327 participants were included in the details revealed from the online study, which aimed to dispel the myth that open source supporters are invariably bearded geeks, male and impoverished, company co-founder Jeff Waugh said.
"There are certain perceptions of the community that are somewhat inaccurate," he commented. The survey was sponsored by Fujitsu, IBM and NICTA.
Facial hair growth wasn't captured by the questions, but the survey still showed a gender imbalance with only seven percent of respondents being female. However, notions of poverty seem somewhat misplaced.
"Our salary is almost three times the national median," Jeff Waugh noted, adding that one concept for promoting the survey's findings might be: "Dorking around on the Internet with your friends is a career path."
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The majority of participants predictably worked in IT, but only 10 percent were working on open source projects as a full-time paid task.
The median age of survey respondents was 30, and the most common year of birth was 1982. While the majority of respondents came from NSW, Victoria and Queensland, the ACT was disproportionately represented relative to its size.
Jeff Waugh suggested that was due to the presence of IBM's OzLabs in Canberra, but one audience member offered an alternative explanation: "There's nothing else to do."
One possible non-tech pastime might be sex. Dispelling the concept of open source enthusiasts as solitary and unlovable, 55 percent said they were part of a couple, and 31 percent had children.
Australians who had left for overseas were also included in the study. Of those, only 50 percent had specific plans to return to Australia, with most of those saying the lack of job opportunities was a concern.
"If we're losing people overseas because of job opportunities, that's a great loss to the community," Waugh Partners co-founder Pia Waugh said.
The full survey, including details from open source companies and industry participants, is scheduled for release in March.
Wow.... I'm a 27 year old open source developer in Canberra. One thing which the study doesn't seem to acknowledge is the large number of projects funded by the Government in Canberra which have an open source basis. Not all of them are entirely open source, but I've seen a few projects hosted out of the National Library, Australian National University and Dept of the Environment which all participated to some degree with open source commitments. It's really nice to be able to work on projects which hook in to the many beneficial things going on in the open source world. I also think it represents a bit of a shift in the governments perspective on open source solutions. I like to think of it this way: There are many governments and departments on earth, all managing their own software - by collaborating together they can cut down on software costs and also produce better solutions.