  Invisible labor is work that is not fully visible, not appropriately
compensated, or both. In open source software (OSS) ecosystems, essential tasks
that do not involve code (like content moderation) often become invisible to
the detriment of individuals and organizations. However, invisible labor is so
difficult to measure that we do not know how much of OSS activities are
invisible. Our study addresses this challenge, demonstrating that roughly half
of OSS work is invisible. We do this by developing a survey technique with
cognitive anchoring that measures OSS developer self-assessments of labor
visibility and attribution. Survey respondents (n=142) reported that their work
is more likely to be nonvisible or partially visible (i.e. visible to at most 1
other person) than fully visible (i.e. visible to 2 or more people).
Furthermore, cognitively anchoring participants to the idea of high work
visibility increased perceptions of labor visibility and decreased visibility
importance compared to anchoring to low work visibility. This suggests that
advertising OSS activities as "open" may not make labor visible to most people,
but rather lead contributors to overestimate labor visibility. We therefore add
to a growing body of evidence that designing systems that recognize all kinds
of labor as legitimate contributions is likely to improve fairness in software
development while providing greater transparency into work designs that help
organizations and communities achieve their goals.
