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Table I TARGETED LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS AND BSD COMMUNITIES

Channel Communities Forums Mint, ,, , , openSUSE, MX Linux, Zorin, Arch, ReactOS, Lite, Puppy FreeBSD, SparkyLinux, , , , Bodhi, Gentoo, , Sabayon, , 4MLinux, Tiny Core ClearOS, GhostBSD, NixOS, Studio, NuTyX, wattOS, LibreELEC, , siduction, Porteus, Elive, Scientific Parabola, Maui, , BunsenLabs, Void, Artix, Salix, Pardus, FreeNAS, Pinguy, NAS4Free, IPFire OpenMediaVault, pfSense, Fatdog64, Neptune, SUSE, VyOS, MiniNo, Arya, Runtu, Peach OSI, SalentOS, Zevenet 3CX, NethServer, Wifislax, ArchStrike, Porteus Kiosk, Funtoo, KXStudio, , OviOS, Haiku, Pearl, Karoshi MINIX, Untangle, LinuxBBQ, Refracta, BigLinux, HardenedBSD, PrimTux, EasyNAS, MidnightBSD, Toutou, TurnKey, DietPi , Cucumber, , AsteriskNOW, RISC, CloudReady, Rebellin, RaspBSD, Springdale, Securepoint, PLD, SME Server Swift, TalkingArch, NexentaStor, SMS, Ulteo, Volumio, SuliX, Webconverger, DRBL, Dragora, UBports, Liquid Lemur AIO, SuperGamer, Namib, Obarun Mailing List Debian, Fedora, LXLE, ROSA, DragonFly, Calculate, OpenMandriva, IPFire, , NetBSD, Uruk, CRUX heads, Debian Edu, Endian, OSGeo, LuninuX, APODIO, Rocks Cluster, Clear, Lunar, Frugalware, GoboLinux MirOS, Super Grub2, Bio-Linux, GuixSD, Rescatux, gNewSense Exherbo, Thinstation, Vine, BSDRP, OLPC, T2 , Swecha

Table II QUESTIONS THAT WERE ASKED TO THE RESPONDENTS

Survey Questions to be answered using a Likert Scale Ranking Respondents 1. Do you think it would be a good idea to move the project away from GitHub? that remain on GitHub 2. If the project will be moved away from GitHub to another platform, how much additional effort will be required to get accustomed to the new platform? 3. If you have any specific comments, please feel free to add here (Optional) Respondents 1. How much do you think this decision to move away from GitHub was related to the acquisition? that moved away 2. Do you agree with the decision to move the distribution away from GitHub? from GitHub 3. Does moving away from GitHub affects your contributions to this project? 5. How much additional effort will be required to get accustomed to the new platform? 4. If you have any specific comments, please feel free to add here (Optional) Respondents 1. Do you think it would be a good idea to move the project to GitHub? that do not use GitHub 2. If the distribution/kernel will be moved to GitHub, how much additional effort will be required to get accustomed to the new platform? 3. Apart from Linux and BSD contributions, have you had personal experiences with using GitHub? 4. If you have any specific comments, please feel free to add here (Optional) Open-end feedback 1. If you have any generic comments, please feel free to add here (Optional).

Table III then the project manager/leader (47). Before we proceeded, we DEMOGRAPHICS AND PERSPECTIVEOF LINUX OR BSD DISTRIBUTION asked participants on their impressions of GitHub. We found RESPONDENTS. RESPONDENTSCANCHOOSEMORETHANONE DEMOGRAPHIC. that 63% of the respondents were fans of GitHub. A majority of the respondents either agreed (46%) or had not opinion Demographic (multiple choice allowed) # of Respondents (20%) whether ‘GitHub appeals with access to over 27 million Casual contributors 149 users’. Likewise many agreed (58%) that GitHub has a useful Core contributors 64 set of functions for developers. However, developers were not Project manager/team leader 47 ready to openly compare GitHub when compared to similar Others 16 platforms, with 59% of developers not agreeing or having no Perspective opinion on whether GitHub is the superior platform. Remain on GitHub 138 (56%) Moved Away from GitHub 75 (31%) Do not use GitHub 33 (13%) We report that over half of respondents (55%) claim that TOTAL 246 (100%) the acquisition would be detrimental to their GitHub projects. Furthermore, most respondents negatively responded to the possibility of an expansion of Free and Open source contrib- utors (74%), and about half of the respondents (45%) did not the responses were mainly filled out by many causal contrib- think the acquisition would bring improvements, reliability, utors (149). This was followed by core contributors (64) and and services with the platform. 3

III. SURVEY FINDINGS buying Github by Microsoft. For example, we use Skype so Based on the questionnaire, we first analysed all answers far and we will continue to use it until it suits our needs, or according the perspective and then conducted a deeper analysis until we do something relatively convenient for us.’ of the open-ended optional comments. b) Neutral Responses: For the 28 respondents, they were not as concerned of the acquisition as much, citing other alternative platforms such as GitLab or that ‘It’s easy to A. Feedback based on Perspective migrate to other git hosting platforms, but that’s not needed As shown in Table III, we found that over half of our right now for me.’ From this point of view, respondents did respondents did not move away from GitHub (138, 56%), cite the benefits of using GitHub because of its huge userbase, while a third of the respondents already had their projects ‘The problem is, if too much devs move to other move away from GitHub (75, 31%). Finally, there was a platforms, then the greatest benefit of GitHib (easy smaller number of respondents that did not host any of their cross-contribution and linking between different projects on GitHub (33, 13%). projects) will be lost. Thus follow the herd ;).’ For developers that are currently contributing to GitHub, Another respondent expressed that the strong support ‘Github 33% of respondents thought it was a bad idea for their projects has strong support for SaaS integration (CI/CD services in to move. In terms of the additional effort required to move, particular), but these services are provided by third parties. there was mixed responses, with no clear majority. Github’s competitors .. provide CI/CD functionality as part of For the developers that had any of their projects migrate their packages which would probably make me decide to use away, the majority completely agreed (65%) with the decision them instead of Github if I had to set up a new user account to move and were sure that the acquisition was the key right now.” and yet another ‘Imho GitLab is superior in parts motivation (59%). Interestingly, when asked about how the of functionality but is still lacking the userbase.’ move would affect their contributions, developers were less Other respondents cited that GiHub was not their primary forthcoming with 53% either neutral or having no opinion. source, thus did not see any immediate threat. For example, Still developers were more optimistic with the move, with a one respondent stated that ‘FreeBSD doesn’t use GitHub as its majority of 36% confident that no additional effort would be primary source anyway’ and that it was too early to see any required to get accustomed to the new platform. affect, ‘Practically speaking, nothing has changed yet. We are For the developers that never contributed to any GitHub not even talking about predictions, but about “gut feelings”’. projects, 80% thought that moving to GitHub was not a good As mentioned by a Debian developer: idea. In terms of the effort required, a significant number of ‘The Debian project had always been in favour of respondents (29%) had no opinion, while 48% reported that it not using services running on infrastructure that is would take them much effort to get accustomed. That being not managed by Debian. Impact to the project has said, a majority (65%) of these developers had other open been minimal as we had already our own infrastruc- source of personal projects on GitHub. ture ( recently migrated to salsa.debian.org, our own gitlab infrastructure). Debian is used to Takeaway 1: Some of the responded developers of handling upstream developers using many different the Linux and BSD distribution had left GitHub or forges (Sourceforge, Savannah, GitHub, Gitlab) and had not used GitHub, although the majority continued the impact of upstream moving from GitHub to using GitHub. Developers that stayed with GitHub did GitSalsa has not been significant.’ not cite that additional effort is not a reason why they remained with GitHub. This sentiment can be seen in other responses that state that ‘The ownership of GitHub is not relevant at all.’. Overall, there is divided feelings, even within the teams: ‘Many team members are not concerned about the B. Open-end Feedback use of Github, and the convenience of the features on We also collected all open-end comments (optional) and Github are useful. Visibility of the project (example manually categorized the reasons based on their polarity of Mapserver) is very important to some team leaders, their sentiments (i.e., positive, neutral or negative). Out of the and there is no replacement. We at OSGeo dot org 70 responses, we were removed 9 responses that were not have already built our own git server, and it is relevant, leaving 61 sentences. popular in our group.. the content of the projects a) Positive Responses: We find 3 respondents that were is perfectly mirrored, but the tickets and PR history in favor of the acquisition, stating that does not port. Some people have found tools to ‘Microsoft brings money, money means stable and migrate away from Github, but it has not happened reliable hosting of our source code’ in general. The opinions about this are very divided, As has been reported in previous studies, innovative services with strong feelings on different sides.’ are the key to sustainable projects [11]. Other sentiments In fact, respondents were quick to remark that GitHub is includes the statement that ‘It’s useful for mirrors in order propriety. to make it easy for drive-by contributors’ and that it is ‘The problem is NOT GitHUB-Microsoft deal but convenient, stating that ‘I don’t see anything wrong with more general, a small example: in the past we 4

(nearly) all use usenet. There are TONS of newserver IV. AYEAR FOLLOW-UP around the world, anyone can host another if he We contacted a subset of the developers on November 12th or she want. There are plenty of groups some fun, 2019 to confirm the results and survey their stance, a year some about sport, some about work, some to help after the acquisition and first survey. The main goal was to others, some to discuss new ideas, ... today we have confirm our findings by asking the single question: After one FEW non-integrated proprietary platforms (from Fb year, has your perception on Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub to StackExchange to Reddit to 4Chan, YC, ... all changed? Out of the 16 emails sent out to the respondents, we of them are POOR replacements of ancient ng. All received 4 responses. of them are proprietary and depend on a single We found that all respondents had unchanged sentiments company.’ towards the acquisition, with stronger conviction on the vi- However, being propriety itself had mixed feelings, with one olation of freedom. One interesting response we found that respondent stating that: ‘This has always been a proprietary GitHub should not be a reflection of all Open Source: service using open source technologies. The owner doesn’t ‘All development of open source is happening on really matter to me as long as they don’t mess with code or Github - therefore Github = Open Source and that visibility of projects for business purposes’. I have heard not once but many times and I have c) Negative Responses: We found 30 negative responses, also heard Git = Github’ which expressed a distrust of a closed source to merge with an open source. For example, Furthermore, the social impact of GitHub on the Open Source community is a concern for a free community devel- ‘A Platform to develop OpenSource software cannot oper. be controlled by King of closed source software. It’s a contradiction.’ ‘What many open source developers see in Github and many other services is a free lunch which they Similar responses where expressed by respondents, even if are so it’s hard to argue about that. It’s a free there was no grounds. For example, lunch that encourages you to market the free lunch ‘It’s quite hard for me to trust Microsoft, they’re and that you are almost an outcast if you aren’t. probably still planning to EEE stuff - even a ”harm- “Hey why aren’t you putting the github link on your less” tiger raised in captivity will still bite’ page? Don’t you know all open source happens on Ideas of freedom, in terms of both legal and that it could have GitHub?”’ an effect on the quality of the code. Such concerns arised with a respondent that stated that ‘.. the ability to change the Takeaway 3: The acquisition provides a reminder to foundations and the fundamentals of your project by using acknowledge the existence of FLOSS Communities terms and conditions will result in a poorer product and more that reside outside the GitHub Platform. people worried about legal implications instead of writing code.’. Another respondent was concerned with the idea of a monoculture, stating that V. CLOSING REMARKS ‘Monocultures are to be avoided, GitHub should simply be one of a number of similar projects to We understand and acknowledge that our survey may only be used by software projects.’ represent a small fraction of the free community of traditional Open Source software, but it is a good indicator that the free- This is supported by another respondent that ‘”GitHub is dom community is still active. Looking forward, we recognize a centralised, proprietary platform and always has been’. that although GitHub hosts influential and exciting part of Another respondent was abit less direct, stating that ‘I prefer Open Source, it is a reminder that GitHub is not always a free and open tools’. Another yet, stated how it impedes representative FLOSS. competitive software (sw), ‘MS will impede development of competitive sw to MS products’. Finally, there were statements that directly referenced the REFERENCES freedom of open source in their response, stating that: [1] R. G. Kula and G. Robles, The Life and Death of Software Ecosystems. ‘Today and not since today our freedom is get- Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2019, pp. 97–105. [2] Tidelift, “The 2019 tidelift managed open source survey results,” ting smaller and smaller from the hardware (UEFI https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4008838/Resources/The-2019-Tidelift-managed-open-source-survey-results.pdf, (in)secure-boot etc) to services (how many people 2019. instead of have a local maildir sync-ed, for instance, [3] M. C. Blogs, “Microsoft completes github acquisition,” https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/10/26/microsoft-completes-github-acquisition/, only live on webmails?) to the society in general’ 2018. [4] N. Friedman, “Pull request successfully merged. starting build. . . ,” Takeaway 2: We found that the theme of the free- https://github.blog/2018-10-26-github-and-microsoft/, 2018. [5] R. Stallman, “Floss and foss,” https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html. nature of Open Source, especially in regards to GitHub [6] M. 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[8] C. Tozzi, “ vs 8 “secure boot”,” https://www.channelfutures.com/open-source/free-software-foundation-vs-microsoft-windows-8-secure-boot, 2013. [9] J. Sullivan, “Fsf statement on mi- crosoft joining the open invention network,” https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-statement-on-microsoft-joining-the-open-invention-network, 2018. [10] J. Jiang, D. Lo, J. He, X. Xia, P. S. Kochhar, and L. Zhang, “Why and how developers fork what from whom in github,” Empirical Softw. Engg., vol. 22, no. 1, p. 547–578, Feb. 2017. [Online]. Available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-016-9436-6 [11] H. Hata, T. Todo, S. Onoue, and K. Matsumoto, “Characteristics of sustainable oss projects: A theoretical and empirical study,” in 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, 2015, pp. 15–21.