Minisymposium Presentation

Open source software has a notorious diversity problem. Women’s participation in OSS development is significantly lower than that of industry (10% compared to 30% of programmers). Multiple studies have highlighted women’s lower participation levels in OSS and their barriers to entry, and more recent studies have begun to expand to other underrepresented groups, such as Black and Hispanic contributors. To understand the state of the literature on diversity, equity, and inclusion in OSS, we have conducted a literature review to coalesce findings and recommendations. We take a broader definition of diversity, and sought out to analyze all articles concerning gender, race/ethnicity, ability, sexuality, and geographic location/national origin in OSS development and communities. We studied almost 200 papers, of which 108 discussed diversity in OSS. Here, we present our coding scheme, as well as future directions for researchers and OSS practitioners, communities, and advocates.