Note: I’m approaching this from a research and analysis perspective rather than as a code contributor.
This issue shares descriptive, non-normative metrics related to contributor retention and participation patterns in the Bitcoin Core repository, derived from publicly observable GitHub activity over time.
Long-lived open-source projects commonly track indicators such as review latency, bus factor, CI reliability, and test coverage. Contributor retention and participation depth are complementary project-health signals, particularly for repositories with high review load and long-lived maintenance requirements.
Recent longitudinal analysis of participation data suggests: A large fraction of historical participants become inactive within a year of their last recorded activity. Long-term active contributors represent a small fraction of total historical participants. High exit rates are observable even among contributors whose pull requests were frequently merged.
These observations are purely descriptive and do not assert intent, motivation, or off-repository contribution. “Inactive” refers only to the absence of observable GitHub activity within a defined time window.
This issue does not propose: Changes to Bitcoin Core policy or consensus rules Modifications to maintainership or decision authority Normative claims about how governance should function
The purpose is limited to:
- Assessing whether retention and participation metrics are useful additions to existing project-health observability.
- Determining if existing tooling already captures these signals adequately, or if gaps exist.
- Enabling reproducible discussion around contributor lifecycle dynamics that may affect review capacity, onboarding, and long-term maintenance load.
If this repository considers contributor retention metrics out of scope, that clarification would itself be useful for aligning expectations around which project-health signals are tracked here versus elsewhere.
Methodology, assumptions, and raw aggregation logic can be shared or adjusted for comparison if helpful. Thank you.
