Read 2026-10-04
openrefine/openrefine: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in openrefine/openrefine's code and history at ef2b774: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | strong |
| Security & Reliability Posture | strong |
| Observability & Operations | not assessable |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
- Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed
LICENSE.txt: Relicensed: proprietary → BSD-2-Clause (2010-03-30) → BSD-3-Clause (2010-10-20)
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongmain/src/com/google/refine/clustering/binning/Metaphone3.java is 7,358 lines, 79× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 93 lines. 6 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 7,358. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
main/src/com/google/refine/clustering/binning/Metaphone3.java:1 — 7,358 lines (79× median) |
extensions/wikibase/src/org/openrefine/wikibase/utils/LanguageCodeStore.java:1 — 2,166 lines (23× median) |
main/webapp/modules/core/externals/suggest/suggest-4_3a.js:1 — 1,975 lines (21× median) |
modules/core/src/main/java/com/google/refine/expr/util/CalendarParser.java:1 — 1,878 lines (20× median) |
modules/core/src/main/java/com/google/refine/importing/ImportingUtilities.java:1 — 1,294 lines (13× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
strongEffort is shifting from building to rewriting
adequateDeleted lines per line added rose from 0.22 to 1.53 between the first and second halves of this history. Rework is normal and often healthy, but a rising ratio means an increasing share of the team's time is spent replacing code that already exists rather than building what does not. Whether that is deliberate repayment or churn is a question for the team.
| first half 0.22, second half 1.53 (split 2018-07-10) |
Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed
adequateThe newest release, 3.10.1, is not on the branch this survey read; the newest release on it is 3.3. The shipped product may differ from what this report describes. Survey the release branch too.
| tag 3.10.1 |
Security & Reliability Posture
strongThe build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate5 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.
.github/workflows/pull_request_e2e.yml:219 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/snapshot_release.yml:279 — action pinned by tag |
Relicensed: proprietary → BSD-2-Clause (2010-03-30) → BSD-3-Clause (2010-10-20)
adequateThe root licence changed 2 time(s). Code taken under earlier terms stays under them; check which terms any fork or customer relied on.
LICENSE.txt — proprietary from 2010-02-07 |
LICENSE.txt — BSD-2-Clause from 2010-03-30 |
LICENSE.txt — BSD-3-Clause from 2010-10-20 |
7 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 6 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2024-10-24. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 1 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 3.3.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. GHSA-qfwq-6jh6-8xx4 (high), GHSA-j8hp-f2mj-586g (moderate), GHSA-79jv-5226-783f (high) and 2 more are fixed in the surveyed commit; which release carries them cannot be told from this history, which does not place the release users run. Answer lives in: the version you run.
| 2024-10-24: GHSA-qfwq-6jh6-8xx4 (high), fixed in 3.8.3: Path traversal in LoadLanguageCommand |
| 2024-10-24: GHSA-j8hp-f2mj-586g (moderate), fixed in 3.8.3: Error page lacks escaping, leading to potential XSS on import of malicious project |
| 2024-10-24: GHSA-3pg4-qwc8-426r (high), fixed in 3.8.3: Leakage of Google API credentials in releases |
| 2024-10-24: GHSA-87cf-j763-vvh8 (high), fixed in 3.8.3: SQLite integration allows filesystem access, remote code execution (RCE) |
| 2024-10-24: GHSA-79jv-5226-783f (high), fixed in 3.8.3: Reflected cross-site scripting vulnerability (XSS) from POST request in ExportRowsCommand |
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 5 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on openrefine/openrefine: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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