Software bot: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:27, 15 January 2021

Revision as of 19:35, 13 May 2021

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A '''software bot''' is a type of [[software agent]] in the service of software project management and software engineering. A software bot has an identity and potentially personified aspects in order to serve their stakeholders.<ref name="LebeufZagalsky2019">{{cite journal|last1=Lebeuf|first1=Carlene|last2=Zagalsky|first2=Alexey|last3=Foucault|first3=Matthieu|last4=Storey|first4=Margaret-Anne|title=Defining and Classifying Software Bots: A Faceted Taxonomy|year=2019|pages=1–6|doi=10.1109/BotSE.2019.00008|journal=Proceedings of Bots in Software Engineering|isbn=978-1-7281-2262-5|s2cid=195064960}}</ref> Software bots often compose software services and provide an alternative user interface, which is sometimes, but not necessarily conversational.

Software bots are typically used to execute tasks, suggest actions, engage in dialogue, and promote social and cultural aspects of a software project.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/17/meet-the-bots-that-help-moderate-stack-overflow/|title=Meet the Bots that Help Moderate Stack Overflow|last=Team|first=The SOBotics|date=2019-09-17|website=Stack Overflow Blog|language=en-US|access-date=2019-11-22}}</ref>

The term ''bot'' is derived from [[robot]]. However, robots act in the physical world and software bots act only in digital spaces.<ref name="LebeufZagalsky2019"/> Some software bots are designed and behave as [[chatbot]]s, but not all [[chatbot]]s are software bots. Erlenhov et al.<ref name="Erlenhov2019">{{Cite journal|lastlast1=Erlenhov|firstfirst1=Linda|last2=Gomes de Oliveira Neto|first2=Francisco|last3=Scandariato|first3=Riccardo|last4=Leitner|first4=Philipp|year=2019|title=Current and Future Bots in Software Development|url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8823643/|journal=2019 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on Bots in Software Engineering (BotSE)|___location=Montreal, QC, Canada|publisher=IEEE|pages=7–11|doi=10.1109/BotSE.2019.00009|isbn=978-1-7281-2262-5|s2cid=195065273}}</ref> discuss the past and future of software bots and show that software bots have been adopted for many years.

== Usage ==

Software bots are used to support development activities, such as communication among software developers and automation of repetitive tasks. Software bots have been adopted by several communities related to software development, such as open-source communities on [[GitHub]]<ref>{{Cite journal|lastlast1=Wessel|firstfirst1=Mairieli|last2=de Souza|first2=Bruno Mendes|last3=Steinmacher|first3=Igor|last4=Wiese|first4=Igor S.|last5=Polato|first5=Ivanilton|last6=Chaves|first6=Ana Paula|last7=Gerosa|first7=Marco A.|date=2018-11-01|title=The Power of Bots: Characterizing and Understanding Bots in OSS Projects|journal=Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction|language=en|volume=2|issue=CSCW|pages=1–19|doi=10.1145/3274451|s2cid=53235433}}</ref> and [[Stack Overflow]].

GitHub bots have user accounts and can open, close, or comment on [[Distributed version control#Pull requests|pull requests]] and [[Software project management#Issue|issues]]. GitHub bots have been used to assign reviewers, ask contributors to sign the [[Contributor License Agreement]], report continuous integration failures, review code and pull requests, welcome newcomers, run automated tests, merge pull requests, fix bugs<ref>{{Cite journal|lastlast1=Monperrus|firstfirst1=Martin|last2=Urli|first2=Simon|last3=Durieux|first3=Thomas|last4=Martinez|first4=Matias|last5=Baudry|first5=Benoit|last6=Seinturier|first6=Lionel|date=2019|title=Repairnator patches programs automatically|url=http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3345321.3349589|journal=Ubiquity|language=en|volume=2019|issue=July|pages=1–12|doi=10.1145/3349589|doi-access=free}}</ref> and vulnerabilities,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/30/github_security_fixes/|title=Git your patches here! GitHub offers to brew automatic pull requests loaded with vuln fixes|website=www.theregister.co.uk|language=en|access-date=2019-11-22}}</ref> etc.

The [[Slack (software)|Slack]] tool includes an API for developing software bots.<ref>

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Lebeuf et al.<ref name="LebeufZagalsky2019" /> provide a faceted taxonomy to characterize bots based on a literature review. It is composed of 3 main facets: (i) properties of the environment that the bot was created in; (ii) intrinsic properties of the bot itself; and (iii) the bot's interactions within its environment. They further detail the facets into sets of sub-facets under each of the main facets.

Paikari and van der Hoek <ref name="Paikari_vdHoek2018">{{cite book|last1=Paikari|first1=Elahe|title=Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering - CHASE '18|last2=van der Hoek|first2=André|author2-link=André van der Hoek|chapter=A Framework for Understanding Chatbots and their Future|year=2018|pages=13–16|doi=10.1145/3195836.3195859|isbn=9781450357258|s2cid=49562888}}</ref> defined a set of dimensions to enable comparing software bots, applied especifically to chatbots. It resulted in six dimensions:

* '''Type''': the main purpose of the bot (information, collaboration, or automation)

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== Issues and threats ==

Software bots may not be well accepted by humans. A study from the University of Antwerp<ref name="MurgiaJanssens2016">{{cite journal|last1=Murgia|first1=Alessandro|last2=Janssens|first2=Daan|last3=Demeyer|first3=Serge|last4=Vasilescu|first4=Bogdan|title=Among the Machines|journal=Proceedings of CHI|year=2016|pages=1272–1279|doi=10.1145/2851581.2892311|isbn=9781450340823|s2cid=13026142}}</ref> has compared how developers active on Stack Overflow perceive answers generated by software bots. They find that developers perceive the quality of software bot-generated answers to be significantly worse if the identity of the software bot is made apparent. By contrast, answers from software bots with human-like identity were better received. In practice, when software bots are used on platforms like GitHub or Wikipedia, their username makes it clear that they are bots, e.g., DependaBot, RenovateBot, [[User:DatBot]], [[User:SineBot]].

Bots may be subject to special rules. For instance, the Github terms of service<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-service|title=GitHub Terms of Service - GitHub Help|website=help.github.com|access-date=2019-11-22}}</ref> does not allow `bot` but accepts `machine account`, where a `machine account` has two properties: 1) a human takes full responsibility of the bot's actions 2) it cannot create other accounts.