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

The paper presents a longitudinal measurement study on the adoption of the pledge and unveil system calls in OpenBSD. These system calls are used to sandbox programs and libraries. Given a dataset covering 19 releases, many programs and libraries were modified to use the system calls already before their introductions in official releases. The adoption rates have also steadily grown; a linear trend provides a coarse but sensible heuristic. Although particularly programs residing in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin have been modified to use the system calls, the sizes of programs and libraries do not correlate well with the amounts of pledge and unveil system calls invoked. Regarding the pledges made, standard input and output operations have frequently been requested, although the full fine-grained arsenal offered by pledge has generally been utilized in OpenBSD. The same observation is seen in that particularly read operations to given paths have frequently been unveiled. All in all, the measurement results indicate that the adoption of system call minimization and sandboxing techniques is not necessarily as troublesome as has often been discussed in the literature.

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