Diversity in open-source software


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, and to a lesser extent the diversity in people of a sexual minority.
The topic has been and continues to be the subject of significant controversy within the open-source community.

Obstacles for inclusion

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 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:
In 2015 Red Hat started the Women in Open Source Awards.
The winners are:
and Latinos are considered to be underrepresented.

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. 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. This suggests that the open-source community is roughly in line with the software industry's norm.
Several organisations have been set up with the intention of boosting the visibility of the open-source community's LGBT+ members. Examples include , , and .
Notable LGBT+ members of the open-source community include: