Investigating the Distribution of Open Source Funding within Nonprofit Organizations

Abstract: Open source software development projects are often lacks financial support. But nonprofit organizations and hosts are providing services and the possibility of funding the development. Several donators willing to support these nonprofit organizations exist. There has not yet been any formal investigation of the decision processes for the division of the financial support within nonprofit organizations. The qualitative study in this report is motivated by this lack of previous studies in this area as well as the increasing acceptance of open source software. The target group, consisting of respondents from large and nonprofit organizations and hosts, which are well known within open source software development. The purpose of the study is to contribute to the current research in the area by presenting today’s situation about how nonprofit organizations choose to divide and distribute financial donations. The results show how different nonprofit organizations decide and divide financial support. But the fact that the division of financial support is problematic can not be denied. When comparing the amount of financial support that is received by an organization to the existence of a well defined decision process there seems to be a connection. The amount of financial support seems to have an affect on the need for a decision process concerning. The complexity of dividing the financial support among member project seems to be another major cause why division of funding is avoided.