GitHub has released GitHub Innovation Graph, an open data and insights platform that aggregates developer activity on GitHub into eight core metrics including activity on Git, repositories, programming languages, organizations, and topics.

The data is aggregated quarterly and goes back to 2020. As suggested by the name, you can view a range of data visually, and all the data can be downloaded and used freely under a CC0-1.0 license.

GitHub says the Innovation Graph includes longitudinal metrics on software development for economies around the world. There's a webpage and repository, and GitHub expects the data to be used by researchers, policymakers, and developers. 

The first metric, the git pushes metric,  represents the number of times developers in a given economy uploaded code to GitHub. There's a repositories metric that represents software projects in a given economy and is defined by repository count in a given economy. Location is assigned by the mode location of all repository members with triage and above access. A developers metric shows the number of developer accounts on GitHub in a given economy, excluding users that are bots or otherwise flagged as "spammy" within internal systems. This is mirrored by an organizations metric that shows the number of developer groups in a given economy, including companies, academic groups, nonprofits, and informal collectives that organize activity on GitHub.

One interesting metric is the programming languages metric which shows the most popular programming languages within an economy. It gives the total count of unique developers making at least one git push to a repository with a given programming language. A brief examination shows JavaScript top in all regions, with Python second, but languages further down the rankings varied from region to region.

Explaining the launch, GitHub said that its research found that researchers in the international development, public policy, and economics fields were interested in using GitHub data but faced many barriers in obtaining and using that data. GitHub's Mike Linksvayer said:

"We intend for the Innovation Graph to lower those barriers. Researchers in other fields will also benefit from convenient, aggregated data that may have previously required third-party data providers if it was available at all."

Developers will be able to see and explore the broader context for their contributions, for example, how developers collaborate across the global economy, or how the particular language or topic they are interested in is trending around the world.

The GitHub Innovation Graph is available now.

More Information

GitHub Innovation Graph

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