Diversity in open-source software

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Computer programmer typing code.

The open-source-software movement is commonly cited to have a diversity problem. In some ways it reflects that of the general gender disparity in computing, but in general is assumed to be even more severe. The same can be extended to the racial and ethnic diversity of the movement. "Diversity" in this article uses the academic Critical Theory definition. [1]

Contents

The topic has been and continues to be the subject of significant controversy within the open-source community.

Background

Open source software (OSS) is a non-traditional model of software development, where source code is created by a number of virtual volunteers and can be modified by other members of the community. [2] The number of developers working on an OSS project can range from few to thousands but often in many projects, only developers deemed trustworthy by the project maintainers will have the privilege of making additions to the main repository. [3]

The software developed is freely available for use and the number of users varies from few to many millions. [3] Over time, as OSS has continued to grow and offer new solutions to everyday problems, an increasingly diverse user base has continued to evolve. [4] With time and growing usage of OSS projects as new solutions, brings an increasingly diverse user base. [4] In comparison, since the creation of OSS in early 1990s, the community of OSS developers has remained dominated by young men. [4]

Obstacles for inclusion

Hostile Culture

A common criticism levelled at the open source community is that critiques of code contributed to projects have a tendency to become personal attacks. In GitHub's 2017 survey, 50% of the 5,500 respondents claimed they had witnessed toxic interactions while working on open-source projects, and that 18% of them had suffered through a negative interaction. [5] Dismissive responses, conflict, and unwelcoming language were cited as the third, fourth, and sixth biggest problems with open-source respectively.

An oft-repeated sentiment throughout the community is that conflict isn't widespread, but rather quite visible, due to the public nature of forums and mailing lists. The figures, however, make this idea questionable. Some members of the community have cited the community's toxicity as the main reason for open-source's diversity problem. [6]

Gender Bias

In 2017, 3 million "pull requests" were examined from 330,000 GitHub users, 21,000 of those were women, and found code written by women to be accepted more often (78.6%) than code written by men (74.6%). [7] In the cases of developers who were not insiders of a project and those whose gender was assumed identifiable by username or profile picture, code by men was approved at higher rates. [7] The presence of gender bias and its effect on lack of gender diversity within OSS communities is believed true by the researches involved in this project. [7]

Gender diversity

The more recent entering of women into the OSS movement has been suggested as the cause of their underrepresentation in the field; of all women who had contributed to OSS up until 2013, 38.45% of them began to do so from 2009 to 2013, in comparison to only 18.75% of men. [8]

The gender ratio in open source is even greater than the field-wide gender disparity in computing. This has been found by a number of surveys:

In 2015 Red Hat started the Women in Open Source Awards, whose are as follows: [13]

List of winners
YearCommunity AwardAcademic Award
2020 Megan Byrd-Sanicki Netha Hussain
2019 Limor Fried Saloni Garg
2018 Dana Lewis Zui Dighe
2017 Avni Khatri Jigyasa Grover
2016 Jessica McKellar Preeti Murthy
2015 Sage Sharp Kesha Shah

Racial and ethnic diversity

Developers identifying as ethnic and national minorities, specifically Black people and Latinos are considered to be underrepresented in OSS. [14]

Sexual minority diversity

A higher percentage of open-source contributors are members of a sexual minority. A 2017 survey of 5,500 GitHub contributors found that 7% were LGBT compared to 4% of the general population. [5] A 2018 survey conducted by StackOverflow found that out of their sample of 100,000, 6.7% identified as LGBT+, and 0.9% as non-binary or trans. [17] This suggests that the open-source community is roughly in line with the software industry's norm.

Notable LGBT+ members of the open-source community include:

Organizations and Programs

LinuxChix is a women-oriented Linux community encouraging participation in Linux OSS by creating conflict-free and nurturing environments for women to do so. [18] The diversity initiative, EquitableTech, targets minorities in OSS by offering skill training for Black and Latino computer science students with goal of increasing diversity in OSS. [19] Several organisations have been set up with the intention of boosting the visibility of the open-source community's LGBT+ members. Examples include Trans*H4ck, Trans Code, and Lesbians Who Tech.Trans*H4CK was the first transgender "hackathon" with goal of bringing awareness to issues specific to the transgender community. After launching in 2013, it has increased visibility of transgender technologists and entrepreneurs in the technology industry.

Programs

Some FOSS projects have programs to support women.

The Linux Foundation has a diversity program.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source software</span> Software licensed to ensure source code usage rights

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch, but also a split in the developer community; as such, it is a form of schism. Grounds for forking are varying user preferences and stagnated or discontinued development of the original software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Git</span> Software for version control of files

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in any set of computer files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers who are collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.

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In software development, distributed version control is a form of version control in which the complete codebase, including its full history, is mirrored on every developer's computer. Compared to centralized version control, this enables automatic management branching and merging, speeds up most operations, improves the ability to work offline, and does not rely on a single location for backups. Git, the world's most popular version control system, is a distributed version control system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GForge</span>

GForge is a commercial service originally based on the Alexandria software behind SourceForge, a web-based project management and collaboration system which was licensed under the GPL. Open source versions of the GForge code were released from 2002 to 2009, at which point the company behind GForge focused on their proprietary service offering which provides project hosting, version control, code reviews, ticketing, release management, continuous integration and messaging. The FusionForge project emerged in 2009 to pull together open-source development efforts from the variety of software forks which had sprung up.

Open-source software development (OSSD) is the process by which open-source software, or similar software whose source code is publicly available, is developed by an open-source software project. These are software products available with its source code under an open-source license to study, change, and improve its design. Examples of some popular open-source software products are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android, LibreOffice and the VLC media player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mercurial</span> Distributed revision-control tool for software developers

Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux.

The following tables list notable software packages that are nominal IDEs; standalone tools such as source-code editors and GUI builders are not included. These IDEs are listed in alphabetic order of the supported language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thousand Parsec</span>

Thousand Parsec (TP) is a free and open source project with the goal of creating a framework for turn-based space empire building games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux Foundation</span> Non-profit technology consortium to develop the Linux operating system

The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects. In addition to providing a neutral home where Linux kernel development can be protected and accelerated, the LF is dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open-source projects to accelerate technology development and commercial adoption.

A Contributor License Agreement (CLA) defines the terms under which intellectual property has been contributed to a company/project, typically software under an open source license.

The open-source-software movement is a movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea of open-source software.

translatewiki.net, formerly named Betawiki, is a web-based translation platform powered by the Translate extension for MediaWiki. It can be used to translate various kinds of texts but is commonly used for creating localisations for software interfaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outreachy</span> Open source software internship program for marginalized people

Outreachy (previously the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women) is a program that organizes three-month paid internships with free and open-source software projects for people who are typically underrepresented in those projects. The program is organized by the Software Freedom Conservancy and was formerly organized by The GNOME Project and the GNOME Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual Studio Code</span> Source code editor developed by Microsoft

Visual Studio Code, also commonly referred to as VS Code, is a source-code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded Git. Users can change the theme, keyboard shortcuts, preferences, and install extensions that add functionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coraline Ada Ehmke</span> Software developer and open source advocate

Coraline Ada Ehmke is an American software developer, open source advocate, and Founder and Executive Director of the Organization for Ethical Source, based in Chicago, Illinois. She began her career as a web developer in 1994 and has worked in a variety of industries, including engineering, consulting, education, advertising, healthcare, and software development infrastructure. She is known for her work in Ruby, and in 2016 earned the Ruby Hero award at RailsConf, a conference for Ruby on Rails developers. She is also known for her social justice work and activism, writing the Contributor Covenant and Post-Meritocracy Manifesto, and promoting the widespread adoption of codes of conduct for open source projects and communities.

The Contributor Covenant is a code of conduct for contributors to free/open source software projects, created by Coraline Ada Ehmke. Its stated purpose is to reduce harassment of minority, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented open source software developers.

Microsoft, a technology company historically known for its opposition to the open source software paradigm, turned to embrace the approach in the 2010s. From the 1970s through 2000s under CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft viewed the community creation and sharing of communal code, later to be known as free and open source software, as a threat to its business, and both executives spoke negatively against it. In the 2010s, as the industry turned towards cloud, embedded, and mobile computing—technologies powered by open source advances—CEO Satya Nadella led Microsoft towards open source adoption although Microsoft's traditional Windows business continued to grow throughout this period generating revenues of 26.8 billion in the third quarter of 2018, while Microsoft's Azure cloud revenues nearly doubled.

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