What is the Truck Factor of popular GitHub applications? A first assessment

The Truck Factor designates the minimal number of developers that have to be hit by a truck (or quit) before a project is incapacitated. It can be seen as a measurement of the concentration of information in individual team members. We calculate the Truck Factor for 133 popular GitHub applications, in six languages. Results show that most systems have a small truck factor (46% have Truck Factor=1 and 28% have Truck Factor=2).

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