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

This program is tentative and subject to change.

The adoption of third-party libraries has become integral to modern software development, leading to large ecosystems such as PyPI, NPM, and Maven, where contributors typically share the technical expertise to sustain extensions. In communities that are not exclusively composed of developers, however, maintaining plugin ecosystems can present different challenges. In this early results paper, we study \textit{Obsidian}, a knowledge-centric platform whose community—focused on writing, organization, and creativity—has built a substantial plugin ecosystem despite not being developer-centric. We investigate what kinds of plugins exist within this hybrid ecosystem and establish a foundation for understanding how they are maintained. Using repository mining and LLM-based topic modeling on a representative sample of 396 plugins, we identify six topics related to knowledge management and tooling, which is (i) dynamic editing and organization, (ii) interface and layouts, (iii) creative writing and productivity, (iv) knowledge sync solutions, (v) linking and script tools, and (vi) workflow enhancements tools. Furthermore, analysis of the Pull Requests from these plugins show that much software evolution has been performed on these ecosystem. These findings suggest that even in mixed communities, plugin ecosystems can develop recognizable engineering structures, motivating future work that highlight three different research directions with six research questions related to the health and sustainability of these non-developer ecosystems.

This program is tentative and subject to change.

Fri 20 Mar

Displayed time zone: Athens change

11:00 - 12:30
11:00
11m
Talk
Fifty shades of green. Speaking and understanding a secret language of project statuses
Journal First Track
Jakub Chabik Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdańsk, Poland, Bartosz Walter Poznań University of Technology, Poland
11:11
11m
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
11:22
11m
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
11:33
11m
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
11:45
11m
Talk
Extension Decisions in Open Source Software Ecosystem
Journal First Track
Elmira Onagh York University, Maleknaz Nayebi York University
11:56
11m
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 and University of Oulu, Davide Taibi University of Oulu
12:07
11m
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
12:18
11m
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