一句话：分析 160 万开发者 14 年协作网络，揭示性别同质性对开源留存的影响，女性间连接显著降低退出风险。
为理解社交连接如何影响开源软件（OSS）参与，本文基于 World of Code 数据集，分析 2008–2022 年间 160 万开发者的纵向协作网络，重点考察性别同质性（开发者偏好与同性别者协作）与留存的关系。结果显示，女性间的同性别连接比随机预期高出两倍以上，女性倾向形成同质性连接，而男性更偏好跨性别协作，且这些模式随时间演变。控制活跃度后，与女性协作的开发者尤其是女性退出风险显著更低，风险率最多降低 20.7%。研究表明，同质性连接提供社会支持、提升开发者持续性，凸显性别多元且包容的网络对维持 OSS 参与的重要性。
Understanding how social connections shape participation is critical for sustaining open-source software (OSS) communities. To investigate this, we analyze longitudinal collaboration networks of 1.6 million developers over 14 years (2008–2022) using the World of Code dataset, focusing on gender homophily, developers’ preference to collaborate with others of the same gender, and its relationship to retention. We find strong evidence of gender homophily beyond demographic baselines, with same-gender ties among women exceeding random expectations by more than twice. While women tend to form homophilous ties, men show a preference for cross-gender collaboration, and these patterns shift over time as the OSS ecosystem evolves. Most notably, we find that developers, especially women, who collaborate with other women experience significantly lower dropout risk, with hazard rates up to 20.7% lower. These retention effects only become visible after accounting for activity levels, consistent with prior work showing that aggregate analyses can mask true relationships. Our results suggest that homophilous ties offer social support that improves developer persistence, highlighting the importance of inclusive, gender-diverse networks for sustaining participation in OSS projects.
@inproceedings{paperbot11839,
title = {Connected to Stay: Gender Homophily and Its Role in Open-Source Software Developer Retention},
author = {Tielin Katy Yu and Huilian Sophie Qiu and Patrick Park and Laura Dabbish and Bogdan Vasilescu},
booktitle = {ICSE},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1145/3744916.3773181}
}