Episodic Volunteering in Open Source Communities

Episodic volunteers, who prefer short term engagement to habitual contributions, are present in Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities. Little is known about how they are viewed within their communities, how they view their communities, how community managers are managing them, or even how many episodic volunteers contribute to FLOSS projects and how much they contribute. Knowing more about the prevalence and management of episodic volunteers in FLOSS will help community managers make better decisions for engaging and utilizing these volunteers. My dissertation addresses these questions, providing a picture of what episodic volunteering looks like in the context of FLOSS communities.