The Impact of Sanctions on GitHub Developers and Activities

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fan, Youmei, Hovhannisyan, Ani, Hata, Hideaki, Treude, Christoph, Kula, Raula Gaikovina
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Fan, Youmei
Hovhannisyan, Ani
Hata, Hideaki
Treude, Christoph
Kula, Raula Gaikovina
author_facet Fan, Youmei
Hovhannisyan, Ani
Hata, Hideaki
Treude, Christoph
Kula, Raula Gaikovina
contents The GitHub platform has fueled the creation of truly global software, enabling contributions from developers across various geographical regions of the world. As software becomes more entwined with global politics and social regulations, it becomes similarly subject to government sanctions. In 2019, GitHub restricted access to certain services for users in specific locations but rolled back these restrictions for some communities (e.g., the Iranian community) in 2021. We conducted a large-scale empirical study, collecting approximately 156 thousand user profiles and their 41 million activity points from 2008 to 2022, to understand the response of developers. Our results indicate that many of these targeted developers were able to navigate through the sanctions. Furthermore, once these sanctions were lifted, these developers opted to return to GitHub instead of withdrawing their contributions to the platform. The study indicates that platforms like GitHub play key roles in sustaining global contributions to Open Source Software.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_05489
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Impact of Sanctions on GitHub Developers and Activities
Fan, Youmei
Hovhannisyan, Ani
Hata, Hideaki
Treude, Christoph
Kula, Raula Gaikovina
Software Engineering
The GitHub platform has fueled the creation of truly global software, enabling contributions from developers across various geographical regions of the world. As software becomes more entwined with global politics and social regulations, it becomes similarly subject to government sanctions. In 2019, GitHub restricted access to certain services for users in specific locations but rolled back these restrictions for some communities (e.g., the Iranian community) in 2021. We conducted a large-scale empirical study, collecting approximately 156 thousand user profiles and their 41 million activity points from 2008 to 2022, to understand the response of developers. Our results indicate that many of these targeted developers were able to navigate through the sanctions. Furthermore, once these sanctions were lifted, these developers opted to return to GitHub instead of withdrawing their contributions to the platform. The study indicates that platforms like GitHub play key roles in sustaining global contributions to Open Source Software.
title The Impact of Sanctions on GitHub Developers and Activities
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05489