Abstract:
Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) is a powerful development paradigm for
creating software. Increasingly more FOSS projects, like Firefox and Android, are
integrated into mainstream technology. It is important that FOSS projects serve its
diverse user base well. Several surveys have found that existing FOSS communities
are very homogenous populations and made up of mostly men. There are significantly
fewer women participating in FOSS when compared to the percentage of women in
computing in general.
FOSS communities have a large amount of turnover and must have a continual
influx of new developers to keep the project alive and thriving. When a new developer
wants to learn more about a project, report a bug or has a question about the project,
he or she typically posts a message on a mailing list. Mailing lists are the primary form
of communication with FOSS communities, and are the first place where new users
interact with the existing community.
Building on previous research, we examined one of the first steps of joining a
FOSS project, subscribing to a mailing list, and studied posting statistics of females
during the early stages of the process. In particular, we explored 6 FOSS projects:
Buildroot, Busybox, Jaws, Parrot, Uclibc, and Yum. We found that 8.27% of
FOSS list subscribers are women and that significantly fewer posters (6.63%) are
women. Women lurked on a list slightly less than men before replying, and remained
subscribed for slightly less time to a mailing list.
