The myth of the open-source developer is they're unemployed young men coding away in basements. The truth is different. The Linux Foundation[1]'s Open Source Security Foundation (OSSF)[2] and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard[3] (LISH) new survey, Report on the 2020 FOSS Contributor Survey, found a significant number of women developers, with the plurality of programmers in their 30s, and the majority are working full-time jobs with an annual average pay rate of $123,000[4].
Of those surveyed, over half surveyed reported they receive payment for free and open-source software (FOSS) contributions -- from either their employer or a third party. More than half of those surveyed, 51.65%, are specifically paid to develop open-source programs.
That said, while open-source jobs are in high demand[5] and the pay is great, it's not money that brings programmers to open-source. Indeed, even those people paid for working on a FOSS project also contributed to other open-source programs without being compensated.
The survey of almost 1,200 developers found the top reason was adding a needed feature or fix to a program they already use. Or, as Eric S. Raymond put it in his seminal open-source work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar[6], "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
The other top two reasons were the enjoyment of learning and fulfilling a need for creative or enjoyable work. At the bottom? Getting paid.
It's not that programmers dislike making money from their open-source work. Far from it! But money alone isn't that important to them. This can be seen by their answer to another question, which showed that no matter "how many hours they spent on FOSS during paid work time,