Blogs (1) >>
ICSE 2019
Sat 25 - Fri 31 May 2019 Montreal, QC, Canada
Thu 30 May 2019 11:40 - 11:50 at Centre-Ville - Process and Project Management Chair(s): Eray Tüzün

Stack Overflow (SO) is the most popular question-and-answer website for software developers, providing a large amount of copyable code snippets. Using those snippets raises maintenance and legal issues. SO’s license (CC BY-SA 3.0) requires attribution, i.e., referencing the original question or answer, and requires derived work to adopt a compatible license. While there is a heated debate on SO’s license model for code snippets and the required attribution, little is known about the extent to which snippets are copied from SO without proper attribution. We present results of a large-scale empirical study analyzing the usage and attribution of non-trivial Java code snippets from SO answers in public GitHub (GH) projects. We followed three different approaches to triangulate an estimate for the ratio of unattributed usages and conducted two online surveys with software developers to complement our results. For the different sets of projects that we analyzed, the ratio of projects containing files with a reference to SO varied between 3.3% and 11.9%. We found that at most 1.8% of all analyzed repositories containing code from SO used the code in a way compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0. Moreover, we estimate that at most a quarter of the copied code snippets from SO are attributed as required. Of the surveyed developers, almost one half admitted copying code from SO without attribution and about two thirds were not aware of the license of SO code snippets and its implications.

Thu 30 May

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

11:00 - 12:30
11:00
20m
Talk
Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for ResearchersSEIPIndustry Program
Software Engineering in Practice
Jil Klünder Leibniz Universität Hannover, Regina Hebig Chalmers University of Technology & University of Gothenburg, Paolo Tell IT University of Copenhagen, Marco Kuhrmann University of Passau, Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende Makerere University, Rogardt Heldal , Stephan Krusche Technische Universität München, Masud Fazal-Baqaie Heinz Nixdorf Institut, Paderborn University and Fraunhofer IEM, Michael Felderer University of Innsbruck, Marcela Fabiana Genero Bocco University of Castilla-La Mancha, Steffen Küpper Technische Universität Clausthal, Institute for Applied Software Systems Engineering, Sherlock A. Licorish University of Otago, Gustavo López University of Costa Rica, Fergal Mc Caffery Dundalk Institute of Technology & Lero, Özden Özcan Top Dundalk Institute of Technology & Lero, Christian R. Prause Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Rafael Prikladnicki School of Technology at PUCRS University, Eray Tüzün Bilkent University, Dietmar Pfahl University of Tartu, Kurt Schneider , Stephen MacDonell Auckland University of Technology
11:20
20m
Talk
SortingHat: Wizardry on Software Project MembersDemosIndustry Program
Demonstrations
David Moreno-Lumbreras Bitergia, Santiago Dueñas , Valerio Cosentino Bitergia, Miguel Angel Fernandez Bitergia, Ahmed Zerouali UMONS, Gregorio Robles Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Pre-print Media Attached
11:40
10m
Talk
Usage and Attribution of Stack Overflow Code Snippets in GitHub ProjectsIndustry ProgramJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Sebastian Baltes University of Trier, Stephan Diehl Computer Science, University Trier, Germany
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
11:50
10m
Talk
Linear Programming as a Baseline for Software Effort EstimationIndustry ProgramJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Federica Sarro University College London, UK, Alessio Petrozziello University of Portsmouth
12:00
10m
Talk
Asymmetric Release Planning Compromising Satisfaction against DissatisfactionIndustry ProgramJournal-First
Journal-First Papers
Maleknaz Nayebi Polytechnique Montréal, Guenther Ruhe University of Calgary
12:10
10m
Talk
Towards effective AI-powered agile project managementIndustry ProgramNIER
New Ideas and Emerging Results
Hoa Khanh Dam University of Wollongong, Truyen Tran , John Grundy Monash University, Aditya Ghose , Yasutaka Kamei Kyushu University
Pre-print
12:20
10m
Talk
Discussion Period
Papers