Code of conduct in open source projects
Abstract
Open source projects rely on collaboration of members from all around the world using web technologies like GitHub and Gerrit. This mixture of people with a wide range of backgrounds including minorities like women, ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities may increase the risk of offensive and destroying behaviours in the community, potentially leading affected project members to leave towards a more welcoming and friendly environment. To counter these effects, open source projects increasingly are turning to codes of conduct, in an attempt to promote their expectations and standards of ethical behaviour. In this first of its kind empirical study of codes of conduct in open source software projects, we investigated the role, scope and influence of codes of conduct through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative analysis, supported by interviews with practitioners. We found that the top codes of conduct are adopted by hundreds to thousands of projects, while all of them share 5 common dimensions.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The most popular CoC templates include the Contributor's Covenant and the Python Code of Conduct.
“The most popular templates include the CCfoot_0 and the Python Code of Conductfoot_1 [24].”
From Codes of Conduct in Open Source (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
Previous research has found that the content of CoCs can be value-based, rule-based, or a mixture of both.
“Previous research has found that the content of CoCs can be value-based, rule-based, or a mixture of both.”
From Codes of Conduct in Open Source (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
All CoCs studied by Tourani et al. championed diversity and a welcoming community and encouraged respectful and constructive collaboration.
“All CoCs studied by Tourani et al. championed diversity and a welcoming community and encouraged respectful and constructive collaboration [22,24].”
From Codes of Conduct in Open Source (2024) · cites this paper as [24]
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Signals that Potential Contributors Look for When Choosing Open-source Projects
Qiu, H. S., Li, Y. L., Padala, S., Sarma, A., & Vasilescu, B. (2019) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3359224 · Cited by 75 · see citing works
Paradoxes of Openness: Trans Experiences in Open Source Software
Frluckaj, H., Stevens, N., Howison, J., & Dabbish, L. (2024) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3687047 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Codes of Conduct in Open Source
Frluckaj, H., & Howison, J. (2024) · Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering · doi:10.1007/978-1-4842-9651-6_17 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
You can contribute if you... An Empirical Framework of AI Contribution Policies in OSS
Robles, G., & German, D. M. (2026) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2609.07919
- Authors
- Tourani, P., Adams, B., & Serebrenik, A.
- Affiliations
- Polytechnique Montréal (CA)
- Eindhoven University of Technology (NL)
- Venue
- 2017 IEEE 24th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2017-02
- Pages
- 24-33
- OpenAlex
- W2600079720
- Cited by
- 131
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 4
- FWCI
- 8.82
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER) (publishedVersion)
- TU/e Research Portal (submittedVersion)
- PolyPublie (École Polytechnique de Montréal) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Keywords
- codes of conduct, open source projects, online communities, community norms, moral behavior, offensive behavior, diversity and inclusion, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, GitHub, Gerrit, community management
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
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