I Analyzed 26 Major Open Source Projects. Every One Had At Least One Bus-Factor-1 Module

A few weeks ago I started building a CLI tool to analyze git history.

The original goal was simple: make it easier to understand unfamiliar codebases by surfacing ownership concentration, bus factor, churn hotspots, and file coupling patterns.

Once the tool was working, I became curious about something else.

Do large open source projects actually distribute knowledge better?

Most developers assume they do.

If a repository has hundreds or thousands of contributors, surely responsibility is spread across many people.

So I decided to test that assumption.

I ran the tool against 26 major open source repositories including Kubernetes, TensorFlow, VS Code, React, Vue, Angular, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, and others.

What I found surprised me.

Every single repository contained at least one bus-factor-1 module.

Full report:
https://sushantverma7969.github.io/git-archaeologist/

Source code:
https://github.com/SushantVerma7969/git-archaeologist

I'm interested in feedback on both the methodology and the findings. If you spot flaws, edge cases, or ways to improve the analysis, I'd love to hear them.

All raw outputs, repository snapshots, methodology notes, and benchmark data are published alongside the report for reproducibility.