Abstract: The concept of competencies started to grow over the last years and has now arrived in the fast growing field of Free/Libre/Open Source software development (FLOSS). Competencies have been defined, which are necessary for an successful career as an FLOSS developer and also became important to general software development enterprises. To close this gap between FLOSS developers and software developers without experience in FLOSS, a survey was created and conducted, which is described and analyzed in this thesis to see how FLOSS developers have gained their competencies in the past and if there is a difference between FLOSS and non-FLOSS developers. The results show that both groups have learned their competencies mostly through informal methods and that the most important method is “learning by doing”. Also no difference in learning those competencies in the past between FLOSS developers and software developers without participation in FLOSS could be determined, which leads to the conclusion that there are possibilities to develop such competencies outside of FLOSS communities, so software developers in general can keep up with the FLOSS developers.

Keywords:Open Source Competency, Open Source Skills, Informal Learning