Skip to content

C002 — OpenSSF Scorecard Average of 5.4 Out of 10 — Unlikely as stated (20-45%)

Contents

Summary

Claim: The average OpenSSF Scorecard score across the top one million critical open source projects is 5.4 out of 10.

Bottom Line: The claim conflates two separate facts: OpenSSF scans 1 million critical projects weekly (confirmed), and the average Scorecard score is 5.4 (confirmed for Chainguard's analysis of 1,511 Wolfi packages). No source combines these into the claim as stated. The 5.4 figure is plausible for the broader ecosystem (Chainguard notes it is 'typical') but is not confirmed for the 1M critical project population.

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

Searches

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

Sources

ID Title Reliability Relevance
SRC001 https://mir.cs.illinois.edu/marinov/publications/HiltonETAL1 High High
SRC002 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.14572v3 High High
SRC003 https://www.blackduck.com/blog/open-source-trends-ossra-repo High High
SRC004 https://www.scworld.com/news/open-source-vulnerabilities-per Medium High
SRC005 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ High High
SRC006 https://www.sonatype.com/press-releases/sonatypes-10th-annua High High
SRC007 https://www.chainguard.dev/unchained/wolfis-upstream-securit Medium High
SRC008 https://github.com/ossf/scorecard High High
SRC009 https://blog.jetbrains.com/teamcity/2025/10/the-state-of-cic Medium Medium
SRC010 https://arxiv.org/html/2409.07669v2 High High
SRC011 https://www.pixee.ai/blog/sast-false-positives-reduction Medium High
SRC012 https://thenewstack.io/checking-linuxs-code-with-static-anal High High
SRC013 https://www.sonatype.com/state-of-the-software-supply-chain/ High High

Evidence Snapshot

Dimension Rating
Evidence quality Medium
Source agreement Medium

Revisit Triggers

  • [data_update] OpenSSF publishes an aggregate average Scorecard score from their 1M critical project BigQuery dataset.
  • [study] An academic paper computing mean/median Scorecard scores from the BigQuery public dataset is published.
  • [study] Chainguard or another organization publishes a Scorecard analysis of a larger population (>10,000 projects).
  • [event] OpenSSF Scorecard methodology changes significantly (e.g., adding or removing checks, changing weights).

← Back to run overview