SANER 2026
Tue 17 - Fri 20 March 2026 Limassol, Cyprus

Open source software (OSS) generates trillions of dollars in economic value and has become essential to the technical infrastructures that power organizations worldwide. As these systems increasingly depend on OSS, understanding the evolution of these projects is critical. While existing metrics provide insights into project health, one dimension remains understudied: project resilience, or the ability to return to normal operations after disturbances such as contributor departures,security vulnerabilities and bug report spikes. We hypothesize that stable commit patterns may serve as an indicator of underlying project characteristics such as mature governance, sustained contributors, and robust development processes, factors that existing research associates with resilience. Our findings reveal that only 2% of repositories exhibit daily stability, 29% achieve weekly stability, and 50% demonstrate monthly stability, while the remaining half are unstable across all levels of granularity. Analysis of the 50 unstable repositories indicate that 86% of activity is concentrated among a few maintainers, with the top 3 contributors accounting for over 50% of commits in the past 5 years. In contrast, the 50 stable repositories distribute work more evenly, with the top 3 contributors representing less than 50% of commits. Our insights thus far indicate the fragile and multi-dimensional nature of OSS project stability, suggesting a need to go beyond commits to understand how our understanding of stability can be enriched with other considerations such as community engagement metrics and issue or pull request churn. Though our efforts only identified two repositories that achieved stability at all three temporal commit granularities, further investigation into their processes and policies can provide insights and foundations for stability-informed risk assessment in practice.

Fri 20 Mar

Displayed time zone: Athens change

11:00 - 12:30
Session 6C - Open Source Communities, Processes, and SustainabilityEarly Research Achievement (ERA) Track / Short Papers and Posters Track / Journal First Track / Registered Report Track / Research Track at Megaron Gamma
Chair(s): Andrea Stocco Technical University of Munich, fortiss
11:00
7m
Talk
What Drives Issue Resolution Speed? An Empirical Study of Scientific Workflow Systems on GitHub
Short Papers and Posters Track
Khairul Alam University of Saskatchewan, Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan
11:07
7m
Talk
From Commits to Confidence: Towards Stability-Informed Risk Assessment in Open Source.
Early Research Achievement (ERA) Track
Elijah Kayode Adejumo George Mason University, Mariam Guizani Queen's University, Canada, Brittany Johnson George Mason University
11:15
15m
Talk
Community Tapestry: An actionable tool to track turnover and diversity in OSS
Journal First Track
Mariam Guizani Queen's University, Canada, Zixuan Feng Oregon State University, USA, Emily Judith Arteaga Garcia Oregon State University, Katie Kimura Oregon State University, Diane Mueller Bitergia, Luis Canas Diaz Bitergia, Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology, Anita Sarma Oregon State University
11:30
15m
Talk
The Invisible Hand of AI Libraries Shaping Open Source Projects and Communities
Registered Report Track
Matteo Esposito University of Oulu, Andrea Janes Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Valentina Lenarduzzi University of Southern Denmark, Davide Taibi University of Oulu
11:45
7m
Talk
A Measurement Study on the Adoption of Pledges and Unveils in the OpenBSD Operating System
Short Papers and Posters Track
Jukka Ruohonen University of Southern Denmark, Krzysztof Sierszecki University of Southern Denmark, Abhishek Tiwari University of Southern Denmark
11:52
7m
Talk
Not Only for Developers}: Exploring Plugin Maintenance for Knowledge-Centric Communities
Early Research Achievement (ERA) Track
Giovanni Rosa Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, David Moreno-Lumbreras Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Raula Gaikovina Kula The University of Osaka
Pre-print Media Attached