In software engineering, code ownership is a term used to describe control of an individual software developer or a development team over source code modifications of a module or a product.
Koana et al., in their 2024 literature review, found 28 different definitions,[2] and classified them as follows: Some researchers also use the term to describe the authorship of software (identifying who wrote a particular line of software).
Koana et al. state that this is a different, although related, meaning, as the code owner might not be original author of the software piece.
[3] It is generally accepted that the lack of clear code ownership (usually in the form of many developers freely applying small changes to a shared piece of code) is causing errors to be introduced.
[6] Modern version control systems allow explicit designation of code owners for particular files or directories (cf.