Code is not the only king in open source projects

Thursday, April 30, 2020

In open source software repositories such as GitHub — an online platform for software development where developers store their projects and collaborate with other developers — the quality of a coder’s technical contributions is undoubtedly important. Such communities have long seen themselves as meritocracies where code is king and decisions are based solely on technical excellence.

But in a recent study at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, researchers found that whether a developer’s contributions on GitHub are accepted by a project manager is just as likely to hinge on key aspects of a developer’s personality and even more so on social factors.

Read more about the findings.