The

open-source-software movement 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 ope ...

is commonly cited to have a

diversity Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce *Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers * ...

problem. In some ways it reflects that of the general

gender disparity in computing Gender disparity in computing concerns the disparity between the number of men in the field of computing in relation to the lack of women in the field. Originally, computing was seen as a female occupation. As the field evolved, so too did the dem ...

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

Background

Open source software 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 ...

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

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. 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.

Gender Bias

In 2017, 3 million "pull requests" were examined from 330,000

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

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%). 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. The presence of

gender bias Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...

and its effect on lack of gender diversity within OSS communities is believed true by the researches involved in this project.

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. 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: *A 2002 survey of 2,784 open-source-software developers found that 1.1% of them were women. *A 2013 survey of 2,183 open-source contributors found that 81.4% were men and 10.4% were women. This survey included both software contributors and non-software contributors and women were much more likely to be non-software contributors. *A 2017 survey of 5,500 contributors to projects on

found that 95% of contributors were men and 3% were women. In 2015 Red Hat started the Women in Open Source Awards, whose are as follows:

Racial and ethnic diversity

Developers identifying as ethnic and national minorities, specifically Black people and

Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...

s are considered to be underrepresented in OSS. * Of 5,500 Open Source developers surveyed in 2017, the representation of

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...

, from and to anywhere in the world, was 26%. * While 37.8% of professional

computer programmers A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

in the U.S. workforce identified as ethnic or national minorities in 2017, only 16% did in Open Source.

Sexual minority diversity

A higher percentage of open-source contributors are members of a

sexual minority A sexual minority is a group whose sexual identity, orientation or practices differ from the majority of the surrounding society. Primarily used to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, or non-heterosexual individuals, it can also refer to transge ...

. A 2017 survey of 5,500

contributors found that 7% were

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

compared to 4% of the general population. A 2018 survey conducted by

StackOverflow In software, a stack overflow occurs if the call stack pointer exceeds the stack bound. The call stack may consist of a limited amount of address space, often determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many facto ...

found that out of their sample of 100,000, 6.7% identified as

LGBT+ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is ...

, and 0.9% as

non-binary Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typically ...

trans Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond", or "on the other side of". Used alone, trans may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Trans (festival), a former festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom * ''Trans'' (fil ...

. 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: *

Coraline Ada Ehmke Coraline Ada Ehmke is an American software developer and open source advocate 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, ...

, transgender, creator of the

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

. *

Jon "Maddog" Hall Jon "maddog" Hall (born 7 August 1950) is the board chair for the Linux Professional Institute. Career The nickname "maddog" was given to him by his students at Hartford State Technical College, where he was the Department Head of Computer Sc ...

, gay, member of The Linux Professional Institute's board and early advocate of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

. *

Sage Sharp Sage Sharp (formerly Sarah Sharp) is a software engineer who has worked on the Linux kernel, including serving on the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board for two years. Sharp began working on the kernel in 2006 as an undergraduate at ...

, non-binary, Linux kernel maintainer until 2015. *

Josh Simmons Josh is a masculine given name, frequently a diminutive (hypocorism) of the given names Joshua or Joseph, though since the 1970s, it has increasingly become a full name on its own. It may refer to: People A–J * "Josh", an early pseudonym of S ...

, bisexual, member of the

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...

board since 2016.

Organizations and Programs

LinuxChix LinuxChix is a women-oriented Linux community. It was formed to provide both technical and social support for women Linux users, although men are encouraged to contribute. Members of the community are referred to as "a Linux chick" (singular) and "L ...

is a women-oriented Linux community encouraging participation in Linux OSS by creating conflict-free and nurturing environments for women to do so. 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. Several organisations have been set up with the intention of boosting the visibility of the open-source community's LGBT+ members. Examples includ
Trans*H4ckTrans Code
an
Lesbians Who TechTrans*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. * Debian
Debian Women
*

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

KDE Women
*

GNOME Project GNOME Project is a community behind the GNOME desktop environment and the software platform upon which it is based. It consists of all the software developers, artists, writers, translators, other contributors, and active users of GNOME. It is no ...

GNOME Women
The Linux Foundation has
diversity program

References

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Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

{{Cite web , last=Cambra , first=Claudio , url=https://www.codethink.co.uk/articles/2019/acceptance-strife-and-progress-in-the-lgbtiq-and-open-source-communities/, title=Acceptance, strife, and progress in the LGBTIQ+ and open source communities , work=CodeThink , date=2020-06-27 , access-date=2019-07-01 {{cite web , last1=Ghosh , first1=Rishab Aiyer , last2=Glott , first2=Ruediger , last3=Krieger , first3=Bernhard , last4=Robles , first4=Gregorio , title=Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study , date=June 2002 , url=https://www.math.unipd.it/~bellio/FLOSS%20Final%20Report%20-%20Part%204%20-%20Survey%20of%20Developers.pdf , publisher=International Institute of Infonomics University of Maastricht, The Netherlands {{Cite web, url=https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/, title=Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018, website=Stack Overflow, access-date=2019-07-01 {{cite web , title=Women in Open Source Awards, url=https://www.redhat.com/en/about/women-in-open-source#2015finalists, work= Red Hat , access-date=Oct 3, 2020 {{Cite web , url=https://opensourcesurvey.org/2017/ , title=Open Source Survey , work=GitHub , language=en , access-date=2019-07-01 {{cite news , last1=Demby , first1=Gene , title=Why Isn't Open Source A Gateway For Coders Of Color? , url=https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/05/248791579/why-isnt-open-source-a-gateway-for-coders-of-color , access-date=2020-10-03 , publisher=

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

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