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> Encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community Why is this necessary? There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just ch

• mjg59 10y ago
  The absence of minority representation is itself a factor that deters minority involvement.
  • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    I am afraid I don't see how lack of minority representation is a factor in open source software. How does one's race or gender affect whether or not they submit code? edit: Again, if you are downvoting me, please explain so I can understand. I'm not arguing for the sake of argument.
    • cperciva 10y ago
      Humans are herd animals. They tend to look at what other people like them are doing, and do likewise. It's unfortunate that people look at trivia like gender and ethnicity in such circumstances; but it's a fact of human behaviour. If potential contributors look at a project and don't see anyone who "looks like them", they're unlikely to contribute; so projects which want to maximize contributions are well advised to seek ways to "look inclusive". (And this goes beyond open source software, of course. My university's computer science program has seen a significant uptick in applications from females after going out of their way to select photos of female students for recruiting material.) In short, it's a matter of overcoming cognitive biases.
      • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
        I view this issue differently, and I would love your opinion on my view. First on sex/gender: I feel that hormonal differences create psychological differences in the norms between genders. This is why men are generally more aggressive and violent(see higher incarceration rates) and women are more nurturing. These differences lead to people in general choosing careers that reflect their psychology, and forced diversity hurts those that do best in their field. Then on ethnicity, I feel many of the differences come from both differences in opportunity(which should be overcome) and differences in cultural and social norms, which lead to people choosing different careers. In my opinion, forced diversity hurts those who would normally gravitate towards those fields because they are displaced by someone who doesn't necessarily want to be there, but just sees opportunity. Again, I'm not looking to fight. I'd love you opinion on why I'm right or wrong.
        • jsscclr 10y ago
          In the context of open source contributions, no one is displaced. In a wider context, yes, it's a bit more complicated, but Free Software? As a movement, there's power in numbers, and looking to increase that number via a focussed effort on minority groups is simply a smart move.
        • affinehat 10y ago
          Open source software isn't a zero sum game. When one person joins, that does not displace someone else who would normally gravitate to that field because open source can scale efficiently to any number of contributors. On the contrary, not having enough diversity can and does put off those who would otherwise make great contributors.
        • cperciva 10y ago
          Are there differences between genders? Sure. It's an open question how much of the differences are due to direct biological causes and how much are due to societal norms (I find the parallel between open source software and indigenous gift cultures to be quite interesting, for example), but there are certainly differences. As such, I would oppose any attempts to establish quotas or even aspirational targets for diversity; as you say, forced diversity has negative consequences -- not just for the organization, but also for the individuals involved. But as much as we shouldn't be trying to bring in individuals who aren't really interested, we need to make sure we're not keeping out individuals who are interested... in a sense, it's more important to look diverse than it is to be diverse.
        • belorn 10y ago
          Hormonal effects has a long history of being overstated and overused when looking for cause in human behavior. It has been used to argue that women aren't fit to vote, then later that they are not fit to hold professions where a stable emotional state is required, to later conclude that estrogen effect on emotional states is complex and what people at the time attributed to estrogen was primarily cultural expectations rather than actually brain chemistry (concluded with some really interesting studies). One conclusion that a profession said that always made good sense to me is that sex hormones are intended to regulate effective reproductive success, not to regulate emotions in women or violence in men. For example, there was a study done on violent men in prisons and testosterone. The theory that was tested was if testosterone levels were indicator of more violence, for which the data revealed was not the case. Further studies showed that so long testosterone is within natural occurring levels, aggression was not effect by testosterone.
      • Arizhel 10y ago
        I have one big objection to this idea about potential contributors not seeing people who "look like them": We're talking about open-source/Free software here, not working in a corporation. Volunteer FOSS work is all done remotely. If you asked me what the contributors to, say, The GIMP looked like, what sex they were, and what their ethnicities were, I could not tell you other than to merely make a wild guess. I suppose I could go look up their names and then make very good guesses based on those, but that's a lot of work; it's not like the contributor list pops up every time you start the application. FOSS volunteers frequently never see each other in person, and simply send in code contributions. They're not interviewed in-person, and they don't have to show up in-person to an office full of other people. If anything, it should be the most egalitarian form of work worldwide! For most users, FOSS software is made by people who are utterly nameless and faceless. So I really don't see why this should be a factor to potential contributors. It should be the one place where they can feel safest about not being singled out and treated unfairly for their sex/age/ethnicity/other factor. There's not even a requirement that they use their real name! No one's stopping them from making a new email address at fake.name@gmail.com and contributing with that if they're really paranoid about being treated unfairly.
    • spaceheeder 10y ago
      The user you're responding to was trying to articulate that whether or not people submit code is often silently affected by intangibles, like whether or not they think they'll be welcomed into the community and treated with respect and as an equal. Even if you want to argue that the reasons people have for deciding not to get involved in open source are wrong or that those intangibles shouldn't affect open source projects for some other reason, the fact is that the pattern will nevertheless self-reinforce and affect open source by deterring more hands from coming on deck. If x% of the white male population is developing on open source, but only x% * y% of the non-white-male population is, and getting people interested in open source isn't a zero-sum game, then making y as close to 100 as possible can only be a good thing. Making a concerted effort to recruit diversely, it is hoped, will have accelerating returns as intentional involvement of diverse contributors will lead to more and more organic involvement of diverse contributors.
      • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
        Differences in rates between <enter social class here> will always exist. Instead of trying to shoot for equality between every single social class(which will never exist anywhere), we should consider fostering an environment that accepts its inequity in a positive manner.
        • spaceheeder 10y ago
          The goal isn't to make everything equal (at least not in the exact sense that cannot exist anywhere), but to change the widespread perception that treatment of different groups is not equitable. The goal of getting more hands on deck by going after low hanging fruit (ie people who are capable of contributing to open source but currently aren't doing so because they feel uncomfortable or excluded) seems to be a worthier goal than "fostering an environment that accepts its inequity in a positive manner." If you disagree, you are welcome to flesh out your proposal and submit it to the FSF as a candidate high priority project.
          • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
• timonovici 10y ago
  Putting polical corectness aside, it's important to have as a varied crowd as possible using your software, to figure out what's still missing, where you still fall short. I saw that happening time and time again - something I didn't consider important at all, was essential for other folks. One example - if no blind people use your software, you'll never know how hard or easy it is for them - hence you'll never get a blind person to be your contributor, since it's unusable to them.
  • otalp 10y ago
    Similarly, there's a strong need for more developers tools in varied languages. A lot of great minds are being wasted because they are not proficient in English, and don't have a programming language in a language they know, or have difficulty bridging the gap because of a lack of in-depth tutorials in their language.
  • hackuser 10y ago
    > Putting polical corectness aside I'm not sure what that term means. If anything, the politically correct thing - the acceptable thing - is to take shots at "political correctness". But let's have a clear definition and say how it applies to something in particular in this discussion.
    • mwfunk 10y ago
      At this point, any hand-wringing over political correctness feels like mass hysteria a la UFOs in the '50s or fairies in the Victorian era. I see a lot of complaining about it, but I can't even tell you the last time I witnessed any examples of political correctness having any impact on anything of any import whatsoever. On the other hand, I've seen seemingly endless instances of people using political correctness as a strawman to blow off disagreements or criticism without having to address them. It's like a blank check for assholes: if they think that all the people who think they are assholes are a bunch of brainwashed PC zombies, that's a lot easier to deal with than looking in the mirror, thinking about it for like 2 seconds, and maybe growing up a little. Nowadays anti-political correctness seems like an infinitely more widespread and toxic influence on our culture than any supposed PC conspiracy, in the sense that it shuts down honest discussion and keeps people from talking about real issues or understanding each other's perspectives. Ironically a lot anti-PC hysteria uses verbiage about how we should all be up front and direct and brutally honest, but in practice it ends up doing the exact opposite. Nowadays anti-PC hysteria isn't people saying "tell me how you REALLY feel, don't mince words, let's talk straight about real issues"; rather, it's a mostly homogenous group of people saying "shut up and go away, I don't care about seeing things from your point of view, how dare you act like you're special enough to have your own perspective".
• otalp 10y ago
  Not necessarily minorities in the US(in fact a lot of US minorities are overrepresented in tech), but if you could make say, a few Spanish speaking people in poorer parts of Brazil contribute, they could spread whatever knowledge they gained with their broader community and encourage more people to participate who might have otherwise viewed these things as stuff "genius hackers with degrees" do. That would be my reasoning. We need to get people who would never see themselves as being able to develop software because they never went to university or don't have the 'brains' to get into it. There's a lot of wasted brainpower because of the false impression that coding is something for an elite few.
  • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    I like this and agree with this argument. Most arguments for "diversity" are simply based on race and gender in the US, but your argument really was help me understand why true diversity on a global scale would help.
  • soneca 10y ago
    "a few Spanish speaking people in poorer parts of Brazil" Am I missing something here or you really think we speak spanish in Brazil????
    • sangnoir 10y ago
      To be fair - Spanish speakers would be a minority in Brazil ;-)
  • synicalx 10y ago
    So it's not really minorities at all, but entire countries that someone feels are underrepresented?
• dmlorenzetti 10y ago
  There's no force keeping people from contributing At work, we had a speaker who talked about his company's diversity hiring approach. I don't recall specifics, but I believe it was a bank that was pretty well-known for having good representation across race and gender -- which was the basis for the invitation to come speak. The bit that stood out for me was the claim that they never hired merely to increase diversity. Instead, they hired only based on the merit of applicants. To achieve diversity, however, they were very aggressive about inviting minority applicants to apply, for example, posting job notices in places where under-represented groups were likely to see the notices. Applying that idea to OSS, one could imagine active outreach as a means of increasing diversity among contributors. The larger question of why one should care about having diverse contributors has, I think, been largely addressed by other commenters already. In addition to the UI issues others have mentioned, I might also guess that, from the perspective of Free Software Foundation, they probably also want to understand and engage minorities' privacy concerns.
  • necessity 10y ago
    I am a strong critic of diversity hiring - that is, hiring because of diversity - but this approach is sound. Reaching out to underrepresented groups but hiring solely on the applicant's achievements/merit is the way to go, in my opinion. Having diverse contributors is important, but it isn't more important than having good contributors.
• hackuser 10y ago
  > There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. We all naturally have tunnel vision, and apply our experience to everyone else. I can't speak for you, but many people who don't face discrimination naturally don't encounter the obstacles and don't feel negatively toward minorities; they assume that therefore such things don't exist. But something is missing from our perception, because the evidence is overwhelming. Just consider that a black-skinned person in the U.S., for example, would be insane to assume they face no racism and no risks from it. A woman in IT would be willfully ignorant to think there is no sexism and she faces no threat from it. * The historical record is overwhelming, and does not need to be recounted. * Consider that white-skinned males make up ~33% of the U.S. population, yet look at their overwhelming prevalence in tech, business leadership, government, entertainment, and elsewhere - far more than a 1/3 of the people you see are white guys. Probably not coincidentally, it's the group that benefited most from prior centuries of discrimination. If it was a meritocracy, what is the statistical chance that Silicon Valley or the U.S. Senate would turn out to be so overwhelmingly white male? I doubt you believe that their skin color and gender make them superior (and if someone does, then we don't have to argue about where the barriers are); so how else do we explain their overwhelming proportion of success, and the lack of success for so many minorities? * Surveys show that large numbers have prejudicial views of people of other races, religions, nationalities, etc. Look at the widespread support in Western countries for openly discriminatory leaders, openly discriminatory policies, and similar behavior by many citizens. This includes discrimination by religion (e.g., Muslims), race (e.g., blacks), nationality (immigrants), etc. Many people, even some on HN, claim it's ok to discriminate (to be clear, I don't mean the parent comment), but in the next breath argue that discrimination doesn't exist. There's a lot of literature that answers your question, explaining what those barriers are and what they look like from other people's perspectives.
  • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    What affect does culture and income have on the prevalence of people in tech? Do white people who come from a poor background get into IT more than black people with poor backgrounds? What leads me to believe culture has more of an affect nowadays than race is the fact that Asians have higher average incomes than whites, even though they were also historically subjected to racism.
• freyir 10y ago
  > There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. Are you saying that people who are underrepresented in the free software community have a natural aversion to contributing to free software? That there are no outside forces impacting their choices, but it's something inherent in their character or genetic makeup? I don't believe this to be true. If it's not true, then there do exist external factors that impact people's ability or desire to contribute. > Why is this necessary? I wouldn't claim the statement "Underrepresented people should spend more time contributing to free software" is some universal truth. Far from it. But from the perspective of the FSF, they presumably believe in their mission, and believe that increased diversity and inclusion would improve the community and its ability to achieve its mission.
• webmaven 10y ago
  > There's no force keeping people from contributing, they are just choosing not to. Ah, but there are forces that keep people from contributing, or at least increase the amount of effort required considerably. These forces are not evenly distributed, and there are several dynamics operating that actually increase the effect many of these forces have on members of underrepresented groups. So, given that this is to some extent a self-reinforcing phenomenon, if we want the community to look like it welcomes all comers, we not only have to be welcoming (which we aren't doing that great on in the first place), but also do everything we can to counteract the force of those feedback loops that keep groups underrepresented.
• camdenlock 10y ago
  It becomes an even stranger thing to focus on when you consider that the main avenue of contribution to open source projects is the Internet, a medium where identity is irrelevant. You can be an incredibly productive member of a community and never need to be known as anything but a name, and perhaps "human". Other so-called "identities" are truly irrelevant in this context.
  • brennen 10y ago
    > a medium where identity is irrelevant I find it baffling that this sentence could have been written in earnest at the present historical moment.
• deleted 10y ago
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