%0 Book Section %B Open Source Systems: Adoption and Impact %D 2015 %T How Developers Acquire FLOSS Skills %A Barcomb, Ann %A Grottke, Michael %A Stauffert, Jan-Philipp %A Dirk Riehle %A Jahn, Sabrina %E Damiani, Ernesto %E Frati, Fulvio %E Dirk Riehle %E Wasserman, Anthony I. %K competencies %K Informal learning %K Non-formal learning %K open source %K Skills %K Software developer %X With the increasing prominence of open collaboration as found in free/libre/open source software projects and other joint production communities, potential participants need to acquire skills. How these skills are learned has received little research attention. This article presents a large-scale survey (5,309 valid responses) in which users and developers of the beta release of a popular file download application were asked which learning styles were used to acquire technical and social skills. We find that the extent to which a person acquired the relevant skills through informal methods tends to be higher if the person is a free/libre/open source code contributor, while being a professional software developer does not have this effect. Additionally, younger participants proved more likely to make use of formal methods of learning. These insights will help individuals, commercial companies, educational institutions, governments and open collaborative projects decide how they promote learning. %B Open Source Systems: Adoption and Impact %S IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology %I Springer International Publishing %V 451 %P 23-32 %@ 978-3-319-17836-3 %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_3 %R 10.1007/978-3-319-17837-0_3 %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/oss-2015.pdf %0 Conference Paper %B Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration %D 2014 %T Volunteer Attraction and Retention in Open Source Communities %A Barcomb, Ann %K Community Management %K FLOSS %K open source %K Recruitment %K Service Duration %K Volunteer Management %K Volunteer Retention %K Volunteers %X The importance of volunteers in open source has led to the position of community manager becoming more common in foundations and projects. Yet the advice for volunteer management and retention is fragmented, incomplete, contradictory, and has not been empirically examined. Our aim is to fill this gap by creating a comprehensive guidebook of best practices drawing from open source practitioner guides and general literature on volunteering, and to subject a subset of practices to empirical study. A method for evaluating volunteer attrition in terms of value to the organization will also be developed. %B Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open Collaboration %S OpenSym '14 %I ACM %C New York, NY, USA %P 40:1–40:2 %@ 978-1-4503-3016-9 %U http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2641580.2641628 %R 10.1145/2641580.2641628