Are We On The Same Page

Have you ever wondered whether contributors and maintainers truly understand each other in open-source projects? In our recent research, we explored this very question: how aligned are these two crucial roles in their perceptions of the code review process? The answers reveal subtle yet significant differences that could shape the future of open-source collaboration.

🎯 Purpose of the Research

Code reviews are more than just a technical gatekeeping step—they’re a social process that brings together people with different backgrounds and goals. Yet, while both contributors and maintainers are essential for healthy projects, it’s not always clear whether they’re working from the same set of expectations.

Our research set out to understand where these groups see eye-to-eye and where gaps emerge. We were especially interested in how these differences might lead to misunderstandings or even feelings of bias that could discourage participation and diversity.

🔬 Methodology

To tackle this, we conducted surveys with 289 developers from 81 active GitHub projects, followed up with in-depth interviews of 23 contributors and maintainers. We also took a close look at project documentation to see if it actually matched what people experience on the ground.

📊 Key Findings

What did we find? In many ways, contributors and maintainers agree: correctness and quality are the heart of any good review. But there are important differences too. Maintainers tend to focus more on how well contributions align with project goals, while contributors often highlight the novelty of their ideas. This difference can create friction, especially if maintainers don’t see the need for a flashy new feature that doesn’t quite fit the project’s direction.

We also uncovered how familiarity bias—favoring known contributors—can discourage newcomers. Interestingly, some contributors even see differences in coding style or design choices as bias, when in fact they’re often just personal preferences or different ways of solving problems. Both sides agreed on the need for better tools and automation to streamline reviews and improve documentation so everyone understands what’s expected.

💡 Implications

These insights matter for everyone in open-source. Contributors can help by explaining not just what’s new in their pull requests, but why it matters and how it fits the bigger picture. Maintainers, meanwhile, can build a more inclusive community by actively working to recognize and address biases—especially the tendency to favor those they already know.

For researchers and tool builders, there’s an opportunity here to design better systems that detect bias and automate the busywork of reviews, freeing up maintainers to focus on what really matters.

🧭 Limitations & Next Steps

Of course, this work has some limits. Our findings come mostly from large, active open-source projects, and smaller or more informal communities might work differently. In the future, we’re planning to explore how project-specific contexts shape these differences even further and how better alignment between maintainers and contributors might boost project health and innovation.

We’re also working on new tools to detect bias in code reviews and make the process faster and fairer for everyone.

🗣️ Call to Action or Closing

We’d love to hear your thoughts—have you noticed these challenges in your own projects? Let’s keep the conversation going and work together to make open-source communities more inclusive, innovative, and aligned.

Read the full paper here. Your insights and experiences can help shape the future of open-source collaboration!