I teach a Women and Computers course which exposes students to Open Source software and I’m a somewhat knowledgeable user. It would never occur to me to volunteer for an OpenSource development project because I haven’t a clue about writing code. But I’ll bet I could be very useful in writing Manuals and making user-friendly suggestions. But invitations to join developer communities at SourceForge, etc. do not specifically or visibly invite this kind of participation.

With so many schools and universities emphasizing “service learning,” this would be a great pool for OpenSource developers to draw on.

But I generally agree it’s way easier for a project like the Python project to work on this, and harder for many/most others.

What I mean is that as a consultant/developer who advocates the use of open-source software, I’m often frustrated with needing to explain in great detail all of the benefits of F/LOSS because it seems as though the concepts behind F/LOSS (most notably those vague and slippery ideals of freedom that Benjamin mentions) are often very much in alignment with or are at the very least similar enough that NPOs should be able to quickly grasp the inherent value of F/LOSS.

Similarly, as someone concerned with and cognisant of “diversity issues” (I wouldn’t deign to call myself an “activist”; perhaps “armchair activist” is the right term :), I am often frustrated at the need to have conversations in the open-source world about how to attract and welcome (or even just *not offend*) a more diverse community. It seems as though the very nature of many of the concepts that are central to F/LOSS (freedom, semi-anonymous meritocracy, value of small and large contributions, etc.) are in sync with many of concerns associated with “diversity issues”.

I’m not sure if the lessons that we many in the NP Tech community have learned from trying to explain the first situation apply to the second. I find both conversations frustratingly circular to have. I find myself saying “Don’t you see that it’s *the same concept*?!!?” and being frustrated because the similarities are so obvious to me.

So I’m not sure where else I’m going with this thought, but at the very least I’d be interested to hear of others agree that the similarities I perceive are real and if anyone has any insights on how to apply lessons learned from “one side” to the oth.

(from a comment on Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology)

I’ve realized recently that open-source projects have developed a class structure. First, consider the broad middle-class of little-known but functional projects that have a number of use…

Amanda is starved for developers. I will take anyone who offers to hack on Amanda, whether they have two legs or four. I’m sure there are things I (and Zmanda) could do to increase the attractiveness of the project to contributors, but all of our efforts have been in vain so far. So it’s hard to see how adding diversity as a goal could have much effect at this point.

Buildbot has a relatively large group of developers. Those whose real names I know have male names, so I suspect it’s completely, if not majority-male. Here, too, I would be foolish to push anyone away from the project, but there’s a case to be made for specifically reaching out to folks who I can identify as members of an underrepresented group. But this raises the larger question — aside from not lacing my slide shows with porn and using gender-neutral language, what can I do to make the project more “welcoming” to folks whose group identities I don’t even know?

I’ve realized recently that open-source projects have developed a class structure. First, consider the broad middle-class of little-known but functional projects that have a number of users and several developers (Amanda, Buildbot, Cfengine, Sphinx, Curl, the autoconf archive, maybe GMT). Above these projects are the superprojects that nearly everyone uses and that have hundreds of contributors (Firefox, Linux, Python, Perl, to name a few). These are all islands in a squalid sea of abandonware and single-developer projects (I’ll list my own ‘dev’ here, and with MM’s permission, Xena, too).

I think that approaches to diversity are wildly different for these three classes: Firefox can risk losing developers who violate project norms for inclusiveness, but projects in the middle class are “struggling to get by” and can’t afford cross words exchanged with a valuable contributor.

I’m looking for arguments that can be used in Project X’s community, and I think the case that diversity is good for the project is hard to make if we focus on the project’s own outputs. We have to appeal to values of a community, and the common elements are open source ethics, love of disruptive technology, and (vague and slippery) ideals of freedom.

Specifically about the local organization: The students have appeared from time to time at Project X Meetups, but I don’t attend regularly enough to see them again. It’s on the other side of town from me (and probably many of these students).

@Benjamin. If individual open source projects don’t include goals of bringing more people that the usual suspects into the project, how does this as a bigger goal of the movement make a difference? The open source movement isn’t much more than the collective communities that make it up.

I do agree that it is hard to make the argument on a project by project basis that bringing in different kinds of people makes that individual project better. And I also agree that the avenue of bringing open source projects to new groups of potential users and developers is a powerful avenue. But I can’t see how you can have a broad movement for change in open source without a bunch of individual projects grappling with the issues.

How do those users and developers from that Chicago NPO you are talking about go further in getting involved in Project X if Project X hasn’t though about, or grappled with these issues? What kind of welcome will these folks get? Possibly one that isn’t very friendly.