Open source developers defend themselves more frequently against harassment

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In the Open-Source Survey 2024, GitHub surveyed over 8,400 developers who visit open-source repositories to gain insights into the ecosystem. The trends discovered include security and the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In dealing with harassment, there is a trend towards more active behavior instead of ignoring it.

GitHub first conducted a survey on this topic in the open-source community back in 2017. At that time, 5,500 people took part and disclosed negative experiences with open source, including rude behavior or a lack of documentation.

Security as a selection criterion

The latest edition of the survey contains questions about the US “Secure by Design” campaign by CISA and the FBI, which has been in existence since 2023. 82% of respondents consider the design practices contained therein to be important or very important when using open-source software. In addition, around a third attach importance or high importance to “security by design” when choosing which project they participate in. Only two percent of respondents do not know what the term means.

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

Diversity is increasing, harassment is ignored less often

As GitHub also notes, diversity in the open-source community has increased in recent years: People who belong to an ethnic or national minority in their country of birth now make up 18 percent – compared to 13 percent in 2017.

Developers were also asked about how they deal with harassment of any kind and are now more proactive: 38% say they ignore such incidents, compared to just under half of those surveyed in 2017. Blocking harassing users is now much more popular than in 2017, rising from 24% to 34%. Contacting the maintainers of the project in question or other community members, reporting the incident to the hosting service, or even seeking legal assistance are now also more frequently chosen methods. Direct confrontation with the person in question was chosen by 28.1% (2017: 27.8%). Multiple answers were possible for dealing with harassment.

AI support is the trend

Almost three quarters of respondents use AI tools such as the coding assistant GitHub Copilot to write code or create documentation. Broken down more precisely, 27 percent use AI tools frequently, 26 percent occasionally and 20 percent rarely. 87% of AI users are aware of existing practices for ethics, governance, responsibility and security in relation to artificial intelligence and use them frequently (31 %), sometimes (30 %) or rarely (25 %).

GitHub has summarized further information in a blog post and provides the study results.

(mai)