The Debian survey, held in 2016, marked the first stage of an inquiry into the relationship between volunteer work in free and open source software and broader dimensions of work and employment. This report outlines the key findings from the research.

Big tech firms such as Amazon are using cloud computing and 'software as a service' to transform open source software, which is intended to be shared and modified, into closed assets. This report maps how firms are collaborating with communities of unpaid volunteers to produce open source code, used in most IT applications and infrastructures.