Why Ethics Fail in Open Source Communities

This article explores unethical behavior in open-source software (OSS) projects, focusing on GitHub. Building on six core ethical principles—accountability, attribution, autonomy, informed consent, privacy, and trust—it examines real-world developer discussions to classify ethical violations. Using ontology engineering and SWRL rules, the study identifies 18 types of affected software artifacts and highlights issues ranging from gender bias and unfair code reviews to licensing incompatibilities and trust violations, providing a taxonomy of ethics in OSS communities.