Gender and Participation in Open Source Software Development

Autor: Hana Frluckaj, Laura Dabbish, David Gray Widder, Huilian Sophie Qiu, James D. Herbsleb
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 6:1-31
ISSN: 2573-0142
Popis: Open source software represents an important form of digital infrastructure as well as a pathway to technical careers for many developers, but women are drastically underrepresented in this setting. Although there is a good body of literature on open source participation, there is very little understanding of the participation trajectories and contribution experiences of women developers, and how they compare to those of men developers, in open source software projects. In order to understand their joining and participation trajectories, we conducted interviews with 23 developers (11 men and 12 women) who became core in an open source project. We identify differences in women and men's motivations for initial contributions and joining processes (e.g. women participating in projects that they have been invited to) and sustained involvement in a project. We also describe unique negative experiences faced by women contributors in this setting in each stage of participation. Our results have implications for diversifying participation in open source software and understanding open source as a pathway to technical careers.
Databáze: OpenAIRE