Relationship between Geographical Location and Evaluation of Developer Contributions in GitHub
Ayushi Rastogi (University of California)
Nachiappan Nagappan (Microsoft Research)
Gousios Gousios (TU Delft - Software Engineering)
André van der Hoek (University of California)
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Abstract
Background: Open source software projects show gender bias suggesting that other demographic characteristics of developers, like geographical location, can negatively influence evaluation of contributions too. Aim: This study contributes to this emerging body of knowledge in software development by presenting a quantitative analysis of the relationship between the geographical location of developers and evaluation of their contributions on GitHub. Method: We present an analysis of 70,000+ pull requests selected from 17 most actively participating countries to model the relationship between the geographical location of developers and pull request acceptance decision. Results and Conclusion: We observed structural differences in pull request acceptance rates across 17 countries. Countries with no apparent similarities such as Switzerland and Japan had one of the highest pull request acceptance rates while countries like China and Germany had one of the lowest pull request acceptance rates. Notably, higher acceptance rates were observed for all but one country when pull requests were evaluated by developers from the same country.