Thank you for your interest in our research!
However, we have completed this study and no longer recruit participants!
We want to thank all of our participants for trusting us with their experiences and insights, thereby enabling us to do this research.
In this interview study, we investigate the processes and circumstances of becoming an open-source maintainer,
aiming to shed light on how maintainers are chosen, and to derive recommendations for the future.
We are especially interested in your experiences of granting other people maintainer permissions.
However, we would also like to interview you if you have been on the other side, i.e., been granted maintainer permissions in open-source projects.
Maintainers:
Our definition of maintainers encompasses people who are stewards of open-source projects.
In general, their tasks are dependent upon having extended permissions within the projects they govern,
e.g., to release a new version, directly push commits of their own, or accept patches submitted by other, non-maintainer, developers.
We are looking for people who
have been maintainers in open-source projects
are 18 years of age or older
are comfortable with participating in an interview on this topic in English
Participants will
fill in a short preparatory questionnaire
book a time slot for an interview of about 60 minutes
answer questions on their experiences and opinions during the interview
be offered a compensation of $60 for their time. We can offer the following options:
Amazon vouchers for EU, US, or UK
SEPA transfer
PayPal
Donation to a project of your choice
Please be aware that we cannot reimburse you for any transaction fees that might occur, depending on your choice of compensation.
Maintainers are the cornerstone of each software project.
Prior research has established that maintainers as software engineers are integral to the success of each OSS project.
With ongoing attacks on the software supply chain, they also play a crucial role when it comes to securing their projects, as they are the first line of defense against malicious actors.
From a security standpoint, maintainers fill central positions in the network of trust that enables collaboration in OSS.
However, there is a lack of insight into how maintainers are chosen and what security considerations are part of that choice.
We value and appreciate your contribution in our study.
As briefly described above, participation includes a small sign-up questionnaire of 5-10 minutes, at the end of which you can freely choose an interview time from our available slots.
Participation in an interview will take about about 60 minutes.
During the interview, we are interested in your experiences and opinions when choosing maintainers in open-source projects.
We are committed to maintaining your privacy and confidentiality of all data you provide.
We will only use short quotes from the interviews in our publication with your approval, and make sure that you cannot be identified from our reporting.
After the interview, we offer a compensation of $60 for your time and effort.
We are a joined research team from the state-funded CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany and the North Carolina State University (NC State). Our group studies the intersection of computer security and privacy with human factors. We are particularly interested in investigating end users, administrators, developers, and designers of computer systems and their interdependencies with computer security and privacy mechanisms.
