After my “Would you do it again for free?” talk people always come up to share their stories. (It's one of my favorite parts of public speaking.) One common comment – one that initially surprised me – is “I try to keep my open source software work and my job separate.” I had assumed that everyone's “dream job” would be getting a paycheck for working on their hobby. So in our recent survey of our expert community, I asked, “If there is a company associated with the project you work on, would you like to work there?” Of those that qualified, only 30% would!

We uncovered some other common myths too.

• One of the common misconceptions is that most of OpenLogic's Expert Community also works for an open source company associated with the project they support. Only 6% work for an open source company! In fact over half work for a proprietary software company. (So much for the myth that the open source community hates proprietary software!)

• Not that they don't understand the additional value that the open source software model brings. When asked if there will be a company associated with every open source software project, the response was an overwhelming no (84%) – with one respondent saying "sometimes community driven software is better”.

• And while 52% joined the OpenLogic Expert Community to make money, 64% stated that one of the major reasons they joined was to support open source software. (Don't worry – we plan to continue to pay!)

You can read or press release or check out the data for yourself below. (Note that most of the questions allowed more than one answer so they don't add up to 100%.)