The executive vice president of the Apache Software Foundation has urged the Open Source community to up its game when it comes to creating greater diversity among Open Source developers.
Speaking to TechWeekEurope, Bowen explained that too many Apache projects are created and dominated by white men – something he says has to change.
The Apache Software Foundation is an American non-profit corporation to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. At this year’s Apache Big Data event in Budapest, the foundation revealed where in the world its project contributors were based. Curiously, there are just two in Africa.
Bowen, who himself grew up in Kenya then later moved to the US, said: “I would like to see far more diversity. I would like to see far fewer projects that are ‘white men’. I would like to see more Africans involved in our projects.
“Africa is just incredibly exciting right now when it comes to technology and we have just two committers in Africa and they’re both in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“We have a lot of Asian participation and we have nothing from Africa. I’m African myself and I want to see more African participation.”
Bowen also highlighted the lack of female Open Source project committers. “I also want to see more women participating,” he said. “I want to see less of us old, white guys defining who the new white guys are who join our projects.
“So that’s a big thing that’s really important to me in the coming 20 years – that we fix that.”
The change is happening in the community, he explained, but not fast enough. He also acknowledged that creating greater diversity within the community will be extremely challenging.
“Its going to be difficult to fix it because the ones who are trying to fix it are the ones who caused the problem. But, you know, we’re making slow progress. It always feels so slow and we, just a few months ago, lost Nóirín Plunkett who was one of our members.
“She was incredible, and was making great contributions in that area. Not specifically in Apache – she was an Apache member – but she was contributing to the global equality for women in Open Source. She died fairly recently and we really miss her.”
The Open Source community desperately needs more people like Nóirín, who can help to expedite a positive change, he added.
“We need more people like Nóirín to show us what we’re doing wrong because we tend to be a little bit blind to it ourselves.”
How much do you know about Open Source technology? Take our quiz to find out!
Suspended prison sentence for Craig Wright for “flagrant breach” of court order, after his false…
Cash-strapped south American country agrees to sell or discontinue its national Bitcoin wallet after signing…
Google's change will allow advertisers to track customers' digital “fingerprints”, but UK data protection watchdog…
Welcome to Silicon In Focus Podcast: Tech in 2025! Join Steven Webb, UK Chief Technology…
European Commission publishes preliminary instructions to Apple on how to open up iOS to rivals,…
San Francisco jury finds Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder of Cash App founder Bob…
View Comments
Open source development is one of the most gender and race agnostic fields I can possibly imagine. All anyone needs to get started or to contribute is a computer, an internet connection, and a workspace. That's it. Development environments and instructional materials can readily be obtained through the internet. Much of the collaboration takes place through things like git repositories and chat rooms where no one knows or even cares if you are male or female, African, Asian, Caucasian, or Martian. The only thing that should matter is the code. Does it compile? Does it do what it is supposed to do effectively and efficiently? Does it have bugs and/or security holes? Is it reasonably easy to use and well documented? Questions like these are the important ones. What is between the programmer's ears is more important than what is between their legs, and the quality of their code is more important than the color of their skin.
As for the "Too White and Too Male" 'problem', what is to be done? I hope no one is going to suggest that white males who might otherwise engage in open source development should be discouraged from doing so. Who would that benefit? Everyone who isn't white or male still benefits from the open source code written by white males, or anyone else for that matter. And as for everyone who isn't white or male, again I ask, what is stopping them from contributing if that is what they desire? The white males are not stopping them; the code is open, the tools are open, the projects are open, and even forkable.
So, I guess this is a long-winded way of asking someone to explain the "problem" to me again. Until someone can show me that people who genuinely have the drive and passion for open source development are being actively and systematically prevented from coding because of their gender or ethnicity, the statistical breakdown is neither good nor bad--it simply *is*. And things like "harsh criticism", or "lack of mentors", or even "social pressure" don't necessarily count, because many white males face the same challenges. You know what it's like to be a white male growing up in a tiny, backwater hick town who just happens to have a strong interest in computing and programming? Not easy, even though today I make a good living working with and writing open source code.