# Are Donation Badges Appealing? A Case Study of Developer Responses to Eclipse Bug Reports

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04129 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.04129/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Speed at the Cost of Quality: How Cursor AI Increases Short-Term Velocity and Long-Term Complexity in Open-Source Projects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04427/) (2025)
- [Public-private funding models in open source software development: A case study on scikit-learn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06484/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Eclipse, an open source software project, acknowledges its donors by presenting donation badges in its issue tracking system Bugzilla. However, the rewarding effect of this strategy is currently unknown. We applied a framework of causal inference to investigate relative promptness of developer response to bug reports with donation badges compared with bug reports without the badges, and estimated that donation badges decreases developer response time by a median time of about two hours. The appearance of donation badges is appealing for both donors and organizers because of its practical, rewarding and yet inexpensive effect.