  A tenet of open source software development is to accept contributions from
users-developers (typically after appropriate vetting). But should this also
include interventions done as part of research on open source development?
Following an incident in which buggy code was submitted to the Linux kernel to
see whether it would be caught, we conduct a survey among open source
developers and empirical software engineering researchers to see what behaviors
they think are acceptable. This covers two main issues: the use of publicly
accessible information, and conducting active experimentation. The survey had
224 respondents. The results indicate that open-source developers are largely
open to research, provided it is done transparently. In other words, many would
agree to experiments on open-source projects if the subjects were notified and
provided informed consent, and in special cases also if only the project
leaders agree. While researchers generally hold similar opinions, they
sometimes fail to appreciate certain nuances that are important to developers.
Examples include observing license restrictions on publishing open-source code
and safeguarding the code. Conversely, researchers seem to be more concerned
than developers about privacy issues. Based on these results, it is recommended
that open source repositories and projects address use for research in their
access guidelines, and that researchers take care to ask permission also when
not formally required to do so. We note too that the open source community
wants to be heard, so professional societies and IRBs should consult with them
when formulating ethics codes.
