Cloning: The need to understand developer intent

Many researchers have studied the positive and negative effects of code clones on software quality. However, little is known about the intent and rationale of the developers who clone code. Studies have shown that reusing code is a common practice for developers while programming, but there are many possible motivations for and approaches to code reuse. Although we have some ideas about the intentions of developers when cloning code, comprehensive research is needed to gather conclusive evidence about these intentions and categorize clones based on them. In this paper we argue that to provide developers with better clone management tools, we need to interview developers to better understand their intentions when managing cloned code.