15 Common Types of Unethical Behavior Found in Open-Source Projects

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A groundbreaking study finds 15 different forms of unethical behavior in open source software, ranging from plagiarism to poorly maintained commercial apps.
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Through an analysis of 316 GitHub problems across 842 repositories, this study investigates unethical behavior in open-source software (OSS) projects. We find 15 different categories of unethical behavior mapped to 11 ethical guidelines using keyword-based thematic analysis. These include copyright violations (plagiarism, soft forking, and missing attribution), licensing abuse, self-promotion, privacy violations, offensive language, and unmaintained paid services.