# World of Code: Enabling a Research Workflow for Mining and Analyzing the Universe of Open Source VCS data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.16196 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.16196/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 30 Oct 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [CVEfixes: Automated Collection of Vulnerabilities and Their Fixes from Open-Source Software](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08760/) (2021)
- [Cracks in The Stack: Hidden Vulnerabilities and Licensing Risks in LLM Pre-Training Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02628/) (2025)
- [JEMMA: An Extensible Java Dataset for ML4Code Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09132/) (2022)
- [DocuMint: Docstring Generation for Python using Small Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10243/) (2024)
- [Characterizing Readability Issue Patterns and the Role of Prompt Design in LLM-Generated Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13280/) (2026)
- [Towards Comprehensive Benchmarking Infrastructure for LLMs In Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.21070/) (2026)
- [Detecting AI Coding Agents in Open Source: A Validated Multi-Method Census of 180 Million Repositories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.24429/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Open source software (OSS) is essential for modern society and, while substantial research has been done on individual (typically central) projects, only a limited understanding of the periphery of the entire OSS ecosystem exists. For example, how are the tens of millions of projects in the periphery interconnected through. technical dependencies, code sharing, or knowledge flow? To answer such questions we: a) create a very large and frequently updated collection of version control data in the entire FLOSS ecosystems named World of Code (WoC), that can completely cross-reference authors, projects, commits, blobs, dependencies, and history of the FLOSS ecosystems and b) provide capabilities to efficiently correct, augment, query, and analyze that data. Our current WoC implementation is capable of being updated on a monthly basis and contains over 18B Git objects. To evaluate its research potential and to create vignettes for its usage, we employ WoC in conducting several research tasks. In particular, we find that it is capable of supporting trend evaluation, ecosystem measurement, and the determination of package usage. We expect WoC to spur investigation into global properties of OSS development leading to increased resiliency of the entire OSS ecosystem. Our infrastructure facilitates the discovery of key technical dependencies, code flow, and social networks that provide the basis to determine the structure and evolution of the relationships that drive FLOSS activities and innovation.