How Active Authors are calculated

CodeScene’s subscription model uses the number of active contributors as the main criteria.

An active author is anyone who has committed code over the past three months to the codebase you want to analyze. This time period is a sliding window that always starts at the date of the most recent commit in your repositories. How it works:

• Unique Counting: Each person is counted only once, regardless of how many projects they contribute to.

• Author Aliases: If you see a higher than expected number of active authors, you may have developers committing code with multiple names. To address this, you should map their multiple email addresses using author aliases to ensure accurate counting (instructions here).

• Ex-Developers: Marking someone as an "ex-developer" does not exclude them if they have committed code within the three-month window.

• License Impact: Only active authors count toward your license; historic contributors (no commits in 3 months) do not.

Visualising your Active Authors

You will see the total active author count in the CodeScene footer and can find a full list of your Active Authors under:

• Cloud: https://codescene.io/active-authors

• On-prem: [HOST]/active-authors

Understanding Active Author Calculations for Legacy Projects

In CodeScene, the Active Author count is based on a rolling three-month window that starts from the date of the latest commit in the repository, not from the current date. This detail can sometimes cause confusion when looking at the total number of active authors, especially in legacy or inactive projects.

Here’s an example to illustrate how it works:

• Jane Doe is marked as a former contributor.

• The last commit in the entire repository was made on June 15, 2023. You can verify this in the project dashboard under Scope → Analysis Data → Commits (make sure the commits are sorted by date so the latest appears at the top).

• Jane’s last personal commit was also on June 15, 2023, which is now about 9 months ago. You can find this under Team Dynamics → Author Statistics.

• Yet, under Active Authors, Jane still appears as active.

This happens because the three-month activity window begins relative to the latest repository commit not relative to today’s date.

In this example, the “active” period spans March 15 to June 15, 2023, based on when the last commit occurred. Even though that window is months in the past, Jane still qualifies as “active” within that context since no newer commits have been made to shift the evaluation forward.

If someone were to make a new commit today, the three-month window would move forward accordingly (e.g., October 2025 to January 2026). At that point, Jane would no longer fall into the active author range and would drop out of the Active Authors list.

So, in summary:

• Active Authors are determined by the last three months of activity starting from the most recent commit, not the current date.

• As a result, inactive or legacy projects can appear to have “active authors” until new commits are introduced and the time window updates automatically.

Why is someone who never worked for us counted as an active author?

CodeScene identifies authors only from the git history it analyses. Anyone with commits inside the three-month window is counted, whether or not they are on your payroll. The window is counted back from the latest commit in each repository, not from today's date.

Each person is counted once across all projects, and they are part of the active author count your licence is based on.

When an author has never worked for you, the usual causes are:

• Forked or templated repository. The repository was forked, cloned or started from an open-source project or template, so its history includes the upstream contributors' commits.

• External contributors. Code was written by a contractor, agency or vendor.

• Cherry-picks and merges from other repositories. These keep the original author on each commit.

How to find out where an author came from

Run this in the repository the author is listed against, replacing the name:

git log --author="Jane Doe" --format="%h %an <%ae> %ad %s" --date=short

The dates and commit messages usually show whether the commits arrived with a fork, an upstream merge or an external contribution. You can also browse all analysed commits in CodeScene under Scope → Analysis Data → Commits. CodeScene does not show a per-author breakdown of the commits that made someone active.

Can I exclude an upstream or external author?

CodeScene has no setting that removes a specific person from the active author count while keeping all of their commits in the analysis. Which option fits depends on why the author is there:

Alias mapping is not the right tool for genuine third-party contributors as it would attribute their work to one of your developers.

Quick answers

Are former employees counted? Yes, if they have commits inside the three-month window. Marking someone as an ex-developer does not change the count.

Are bot accounts counted? Yes. Bot commits in the window count towards active authors.

Why do I see more authors than expected? The most common cause is one developer committing under several names or emails. Merge them with alias mapping.

Will going over my licensed count cost more mid-term? No. Annual subscriptions allow growth during the year, the count is reviewed at renewal.