Developer Reactions to Protestware in Open Source Software: The cases of colorjs and es5ext
<|reference_start|>Developer Reactions to Protestware in Open Source Software: The cases of colorjs and es5ext: There is growing concern about maintainers self-sabotaging their work in order to take political or economic stances, a practice referred to as "protestware". Our objective is to understand the discourse around discussions on such an attack, how it is received by the community, and whether developers respond to the attack in a timely manner. We study two notable protestware cases i.e., colors.js and es5-ext. Results indicate that protestware discussions spread rapidly, though not as quickly as security vulnerabilities, with a lower speed when compared to ua-parser and log4j. By establishing a taxonomy of protestware discussions, we identify posts such as expressing stances and providing technical mitigation instructions. A thematic analysis identified five major themes during the discussions: i. disseminate and response, ii. stance, iii. reputation, iv. communicative styles, v. rights and ethics. This work sheds light on the nuanced landscape of protestware discussions, offering insights for both researchers and developers into maintaining a healthy balance between the political or social actions of developers and the collective well-being of the open-source community.<|reference_end|>
@article{fan2024developer,
    title={Developer Reactions to Protestware in Open Source Software: The cases of
  color.js and es5.ext},
    author={Youmei Fan, Dong Wang, Supatsara Wattanakriengkrai, Hathaichanok
  Damrongsiri, Christoph Treude, Hideaki Hata, Raula Gaikovina Kula},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.15674},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2409.15674},
    primaryClass={cs.SE}
}