GitHub Copilot让开源开发贡献多5.9%，但协作变慢。
The Impact of Generative AI on Collaborative Open-Source Software Development: Evidence from GitHub Copilot
- 用AI助手辅助编码，提升开发者参与度和代码贡献量。
- 项目级代码贡献增5.9%，个人贡献增2.1%，但协调时间增8%。
- 对边缘开发者影响更大，适合关注开源协作变革的研究者。
生成式人工智能（AI）促进内容生成与创意激发，可能显著影响开发者生产力与开源软件（OSS）参与度。本文以GitHub Copilot——一款生成式AI编程助手——为研究对象，分析其在分布式自愿协作的OSS开发中的作用。结合GitHub内部的Copilot使用数据与公开的OSS项目数据，发现使用Copilot使项目级代码贡献提升5.9%，开发者编码参与率增加3.4%，个体代码贡献增长2.1%。然而，也伴随8%的协调时间增加和更多代码讨论。这揭示了重要权衡：虽然AI扩大了可参与人群及贡献量，却延缓了集体协作进程。尽管存在张力，整体仍带来代码及时合并的净增长。此外，不同角色开发者表现异质：边缘开发者贡献增幅较小，协调成本上升更明显。结果表明，生成式AI对代码贡献与协作具有双重影响，预示其将重塑开源社区结构。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) facilitates content production and enhances ideation, with potentially important implications for developer productivity and participation in software development. To explore its impact on collaborative open-source software (OSS) development, we investigate the role of GitHub Copilot, a generative AI pair programmer, in OSS development where multiple distributed developers voluntarily collaborate. Using GitHub's proprietary Copilot usage data, combined with public OSS project data obtained from GitHub, we find that Copilot use increases project-level code contributions by 5.9%. This gain is accompanied by a 3.4% increase in developer coding participation and a 2.1% increase in individual code contributions. However, Copilot use is also associated with an 8% increase in coordination time and more code discussions. This reveals an important tradeoff: While AI expands who can contribute and how much they contribute, it slows coordination in collective development efforts. Despite this tension, the overall effect remains positive, resulting in a net increase in the timely merge of code contributions at the project level. Interestingly, we also find heterogeneous effects across developer roles. Peripheral developers exhibit relatively smaller increases in project-level code contributions and larger increases in coordination time than core developers. Together, our findings highlight the dual effects of AI pair programmers on code contributions and coordination in OSS development and provide implications for how generative AI may reshape the structure of OSS communities over time.
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