Provides a statistical baseline for open-source mortality and identifies organizational ownership and community size as primary predictors of long-term project survival.
A survival analysis of 1,127 GitHub projects across four ecosystems (NPM, R, WordPress, Laravel) found that more than 50% of projects are abandoned within four years, and the probability of surviving longer than five years is less than 50%. The prototypical development process consists of intensive coding bursts followed by long periods of inactivity, with 'dead' periods averaging twice the length of 'running' periods. Critically, organization-owned projects exhibit significantly higher survival rates and longer active states than individual-owned projects. The study also identifies community size as a primary resilience factor: 'Tier 1' projects (few contributors) are the most likely to die prematurely, often failing within their first 12 months, whereas larger communities sustain active maintenance for much longer lifespans.
The study confirms that 'Tier 1' projects (low contributor count) are the most susceptible to premature death, with many failing within their first year.
project collapse due to the lack of a sustainable developer community
contributor volume is a statistically significant predictor of project survival, with low-contributor projects showing a clear 'mortality cliff'.
Over 50% of analyzed projects were found to be 'dead' (no human activity) within four years of creation.
dependency on codebases that have reached the end of their lifecycle and will no longer receive security maintenance
identifying abandoned repositories is essential for managing the 50% failure rate documented across major package ecosystems.
Projects developed by organizations seem to have a higher survival rate... probability of surviving longer than five years is less than 50%.
Risk Guard evaluates technical signals but doesn't explicitly distinguish between 'Individual' and 'Organization' ownership in its survival probability scores.
Risk Guard would be better if it applied a 'Governance Bonus' to projects owned by verified organizations or foundations, reflecting their statistically proven higher survival rate.