The Linux and open-source community includes many strong leaders who are women and/or people of color, such as Nithya Ruff, the Linux Foundation‘s chairperson; Abby Kearns, Puppet‘s CTO; and Kelsey Hightower, Google Cloud principal engineer and Kubernetes expert. But, according to a 2017 GitHub open-source survey, only 3% of developers are female, with 1% identified as non-binary. The study didn’t look at race.
It’s high time a new long, serious look be taken at just how exclusive open source’s white boys’ club really is. The Linux Foundation is doing that with a new survey: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in Open Source.
The survey takes about 15-minutes to complete. If you complete the survey, you’ll receive a 20% registration discount to attend the Open Source Summit/Embedded Linux Conference in Seattle.
The Linux Foundation isn’t doing this study just for its own benefit. Numerous pro-open-source companies, such as AWS, CHAOSS, GitHub, GitLab, Red Hat, and VMware are also on board.
Why are they doing it? Because, as Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s Executive Director, said, “Open-source software is created by people of vastly different backgrounds, nationalities, orientations, and identities — all of whose opinions must be respected, included, and recognized. As the leader in running the world’s most important open source communities, it is incumbent upon us to elevate those opinions and concerns regarding important DEI issues with quantifiable data.”
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