Open source developers are more likely to defend themselves against harassment

In the Open Source Survey 2024, GitHub surveyed more than 8,400 developers who visit open source repositories to gain insight into the ecosystem. Trends discovered include security and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). There is a tendency toward more proactive behavior when dealing with harassment rather than ignoring it.

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In 2017, GitHub conducted a related survey in the open source community for the first time. At that time, 5,500 people participated and shared negative experiences with open source, including rude behavior or lack of documentation, among other things.

Security as a selection criterion

The latest edition of the survey includes questions about the US “Secure by Design” campaign by CISA and the FBI, which is in existence through 2023. 82 percent of respondents consider the design practices involved when using open source software to be important or very important. Additionally, when they choose which project they want to participate in, about a third place a higher value or higher value on “security by design.” Only two percent of those surveyed did not know what the term meant.

The most important aspects when selecting open source software to use are – as of 2017 – an open source license, active development, and responsive maintainers. In the current survey, 43 percent of developers consider a friendly welcome in the community to be very important.

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Diversity is increasing, oppression is being ignored less and less

As GitHub further notes, diversity in the open source community has increased over the past few years: the number of people who belong to an ethnic or national minority in their country of birth is now 18 percent – ​​compared to 13 percent in 2017. .

Developers were also asked how they deal with all forms of harassment and are now more proactive: 38 percent say they ignore such incidents, whereas nearly half of those surveyed in 2017 chose this approach. . Blocking troublesome users is now significantly more popular than in 2017, increasing from 24 to 34 percent. Contacting the maintainers or other community members of the project in question, reporting the incident to the hosting service, or even seeking legal help are now more common options. 28.1 percent (2017: 27.8 percent) chose direct confrontation with the person concerned. Several answers were possible regarding how to deal with harassment.

AI support is in trend

Nearly three-quarters of respondents use AI tools like coding assistant GitHub Copilot to write code or create documentation. To get more specific, 27 percent use AI tools often, 26 percent sometimes, and 20 percent occasionally. 87 percent of AI users are aware of existing practices for ethics, governance, responsibility, and security regarding artificial intelligence and use them often (31%), sometimes (30%) or rarely (25%).

GitHub has more information Summarized in a blog entry And Provides study results,

(May)