# Poster: Communication in Open-Source Projects--End of the E-mail Era?

## TL;DR

This study investigates communication channels in open-source GitHub projects, revealing that about half use observable channels, with GitHub Issues, email, and Gitter being most common, while mailing lists are less prevalent.

## Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of communication channel usage in a large, representative sample of open-source projects, highlighting the shift towards modern chat systems.

## Key findings

- Half of GitHub projects use observable communication channels.
- GitHub Issues, email, and Gitter are most common.
- Mailing lists are less prevalent than modern chat systems.

## Abstract

Communication is essential in software engineering. Especially in distributed open-source teams, communication needs to be supported by channels including mailing lists, forums, issue trackers, and chat systems. Yet, we do not have a clear understanding of which communication channels stakeholders in open-source projects use. In this study, we fill the knowledge gap by investigating a statistically representative sample of 400 GitHub projects. We discover the used communication channels by regular expressions on project data. We show that (1) half of the GitHub projects use observable communication channels; (2) GitHub Issues, e-mail addresses, and the modern chat system Gitter are the most common channels; (3) mailing lists are only in place five and have a lower market share than all modern chat systems combined.