Free Software Developer Demographics

[Leslie Viljoen]

If you are developer of free software (not packaging but programming), I am interested in finding out what your circumstances are. I haven't been able to find much information on this online, and I am interested because I'd like to improve some of the code out there but I have a full time life! Unless you are a student, how do you manage to have a full time programming job, be married, have kids, a religion, a band, hobbies AND eat AS WELL AS writing free software?

[stevescripts]

How? ... the Kid has long since grown up, and the band died in the late 60's... :guitar:

Steve

[Leslie Viljoen]

Ah, I'll have to wait a bit!

[ahmatti]

I get to do some programming at work in the Uni, if I can a publication out of it... At home I only mange to code when the kid is sleeping and my wife is not at home. Her travels tend to be the most productive time for me :) Oh, and religion only takes about 30 mins of my time per year...

[slavik]

What is this poll for?

[Leslie Viljoen]

What is this poll for?

For me to find out how people do the impossible! And perhaps get a few tips on how to be more productive and effective in contributing code to free software projects.

[Leslie Viljoen]

Thanks for the responses guys!

[JordyD]

It does show that most here are students. I kind of already guessed at that, but still, it interesting to see it confirmed.

[stevescripts]

It does show that most here are students. I kind of already guessed at that, but still, it interesting to see it confirmed.

hmm ... or does it show that the students are the ones who answered the poll ... ?

Steve

[Leslie Viljoen]

hmm ... or does it show that the students are the ones who answered the poll ... ?

Or that students like forums? But in any case, this info is hard to come by. There must be thousands of programmers actively contributing to the repositories... and getting very little sleep I suppose!

[Leslie Viljoen]

Hey people - any tips on how you do it? Did you make a deal with your boss to sponsor a project with some work hours? Did you persuade your company to release some code? Do you work from 5-6am? Do you take caffiene pills? Are you just a really fast programmer? Are you highly disciplined with your time?

[Nevon]

I've been thinking about that myself. I'm currently unemployed and won't start university for another month, but I still have a hard time finding enough time to work on my free software projects. Sure, I do have a girlfriend, but that's about it. No kids, no job, no school, no religion (don't know why you even brought that up), and programming really is my big hobby right now. I have no idea how I'm going to manage to find any time at all to developing free software in the future.

[days_of_ruin]

Well if you had a busy life outside of FS developing, how much time are you
going to spend on any forum?