Diversity in open source software

The open-source software movement is commonly cited to have a diversity problem that reflects that gender disparity in computing but in general is assumed to be even more severe or different in some ways.

Gender diversity

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.[1]
  • A 2013 survey of 2,183 open source contributors found that 81.4% were men and 10.4% were women.[2] This survey included both software contributors and non-software contributors and women were much more likely to be non-software contributors.[3]
  • A 2017 survey of 5,500 contributors to projects on GitHub found that 95% of contributors were men and 3% were women.[4]

In 2015 RedHat started the Women in Open Source Awards. The winners are:[5]

  • 2017 Community Award winner Avni Khatri
  • 2017 Academic Award winner Jigyasa Grover
  • 2016 Community Award winner Jessica McKellar
  • 2016 Academic Award winner Preeti Murthy
  • 2015 Community Award winner Sarah Sharp
  • 2015 Academic Award winner Kesha Shah

Racial and ethnic diversity

Black people and Latinos are considered to be underrepresented.[6]

Sexual minority diversity

A higher percentage of open source contributors are members of a sexual minority. A 2017 survey of GitHub contributors found that 7% were LGBT compared to 4% of the general population.[4]

References

  1. ↑ http://flossproject.merit.unu.edu/report/Final4.htm
  2. ↑ "FLOSS 2013: A Survey Dataset about Free Software Contributors: Challenges for Curating, Sharing, and Combining". https://www.win.tue.nl/~aserebre/msr14gregorio.pdf
  3. ↑ "Women in Free/Libre/Open Source Software: The situation in the 2010s".
  4. 1 2 Klint, Finley (2 June 2017). "Diversity in Open Source Is Even Worse Than in Tech Overall". Wired.
  5. ↑ "Women in Open Source Awards". Retrieved Feb 3, 2018.
  6. ↑ "Why Isn't Open Source A Gateway For Coders Of Color?". https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/05/248791579/why-isnt-open-source-a-gateway-for-coders-of-color
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