Skip to content

C001 — CI Adoption Rate in Open Source Projects — The claim is likely approximately correct (55-70%) for the specific measurement it derives from (GitHub Actions adoption in active repos circa 2022), but is likely becoming outdated.

Contents

Summary

Claim: Only approximately 40% of open source projects use continuous integration at all.

Bottom Line: The 40% figure traces to Decan et al.'s finding of 43.9% GitHub Actions adoption in 68K repositories by January 2022. This measures only one CI platform among active repos with 300+ stars and commits. Total CI adoption across all platforms is likely higher, and may exceed 50% for active projects in well-established ecosystems (npm repos showed >50% CI adoption by May 2021). The claim's directional value remains: a substantial portion of open source projects lack CI. However, the specific 40% figure should be cited with its source and limitations.

Results

Artifact Description
Input Original text, clarification, scope, vocabulary
Assessment Evidence synthesis, probability assessment, gaps
Self-Audit Process audit across 4 ROBIS domains
Reading List Prioritized source list

Hypotheses

ID Label Status
H1
H2
H3
H4

Searches

ID Target Returned Selected
S01 H1 0 0
S02 H2 0 0
S03 H3 0 0
S04 H4 0 0
S05 H1 0 0

Sources

ID Title Reliability Relevance
SRC001 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.14572v3 High High
SRC002 https://www.chainguard.dev/unchained/wolfis-upstream-securit Medium High
SRC003 https://github.com/ossf/scorecard High High
SRC004 https://www.blackduck.com/blog/open-source-trends-ossra-repo Medium High
SRC005 https://www.scworld.com/news/open-source-vulnerabilities-per Medium High
SRC006 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ Medium High
SRC007 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ Medium High
SRC008 https://www.moderne.ai/blog/security-dependency-updates-unma Medium High
SRC009 https://konvu.com/compare/semgrep-vs-codeql Medium High
SRC010 https://arxiv.org/html/2605.07900v1 High High
SRC011 https://arxiv.org/html/2409.07669v2 High High
SRC012 https://openssf.org/blog/2024/01/31/maintainer-motivations-c High High
SRC013 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-023-10369-w High Medium

Evidence Snapshot

Dimension Rating
Evidence quality Medium
Source agreement Medium

Revisit Triggers

  • [study] A new large-scale study measuring total CI adoption (all platforms) across GitHub repositories is published
  • [data_update] Decan et al. publish an updated GHA adoption measurement for 2025-2026
  • [organization] GitHub publishes official CI adoption statistics for its platform
  • [time] 12 months after this research (May 2027) — CI adoption rates change rapidly enough to warrant periodic remeasurement

← Back to run overview