This isn&#x27;t fair -- the researcher&#x27;s claim is that intrinsic motivations are <i>part of</i> R developer&#x27;s motivations, and actually designed their study to determine to what role intrinsic motivations play in OSS development.<p>Even by the second page of the paper it&#x27;s very clear the study is designed to read off intrinsic motivations, both value-laden and pure enjoyment:<p><i>This framework also accounts for potential interaction
effects between intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation.
For the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation subscales, 36 items
are included in our questionnaire. Each subscale (i.e., enjoyment
based intrinsic motivation, self-reinforcement, obligation-based
motivation, integrated regulation, identification, introjection-based
regulation, external regulation) consists of four to eight items...</i><p>The real question (which the authors are silent on and the journalist helpfully mischaracterizes) is whether these researchers&#x27; results generalize to non-R-ecosystem OSS development.