Intel Survey Finds Maintainer Burnout & Documentation Top Open-Source Challenges

At the end of last year Intel hosted a survey of open-source developers to collect their feeback on various open-source software issues. Intel’s 2023 Open Source Community Survey is all wrapped up, the data tallied up, and the results emailed out today to participants.

I haven't seen Intel post this data on any public web page yet, but per the email, below are all of the results collected from their open-source survey for 2023.

To hardly any surprise, the survey found having an acceptable open-source license was the most important open-source aspect. The license was followed by maintainer responsiveness, activity volume, welcoming community, and then the established policies and documentation.

Of those participating in the survey, Intel found the top open-source challenge faced was maintainer burnout at 45%... That was followed by documentation/onboarding at 41% and then maintaining sustainability at 37%.

Another result of little surprise was finding the open-source project of greatest interest being Linux itself. That was followed by Rust, Clang/LLVM, GCC, and then Kubernetes.

And as a sign of the times, of course AI was brought up in the survey.... And 82% found open-source in AI being either extremely or very important.

Of those that participated in this Intel open-source survey, 30% of those contributed to open-source projects more than once per week.