Diverse Participation and Newcomer Risk Perception in Open Source Software Communities

Open source software (OSS) represents a critical form of global digital infrastructure, and yet its contributor base is worryingly homogeneous. OSS is notorious for its gender rep-resentation problem - only 10 % of OSS contributors are women, compared to 27 % at the broader industry level. Furthermo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings (IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering Companion. Online) pp. 81 - 86
Main Author: Frluckaj, Hana
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 27.04.2025
Subjects:
Diversity
Gender
Gender issues
Industries
newcomers
Open source software
Proposals
Software engineering
ISSN:2574-1934
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Open source software (OSS) represents a critical form of global digital infrastructure, and yet its contributor base is worryingly homogeneous. OSS is notorious for its gender rep-resentation problem - only 10 % of OSS contributors are women, compared to 27 % at the broader industry level. Furthermore, OSS contributors are skewing older, as fewer younger contrib-utors are getting involved. While the OSS literature documents the barriers to participation of cis gender women well, a more holistic understanding of OSS participation is lacking, as are the perspectives of other underrepresented groups. My proposal aims to develop a deeper understanding of how younger and underrepresented potential contributors are being introduced to OSS in varied educational settings and which characteristics may predict their likelihood of future OSS participation or avoidance. My goal for this proposal is to understand how we can encourage more OSS participation amongst younger potential contributors, especially the sustained participation of underrepresented ones.
ISSN:2574-1934
DOI:10.1109/ICSE-Companion66252.2025.00029