Women's participation in GNOME and other open source communities

Opportunities and Challenges in Asia Pacific regions.

Amanda Lam 2012.6.10

Who is Amanda Lam?● BEng Computer Systems Engineering, University of

Warwick, UK

● Product Analyst and Technical Writer of a notable Asian job site

● Founding Member of the Hong Kong MeeGo Network

● Executive Committee Member and Podcaster of the Hong Kong PDA User Group (HKPUG)

● Blogger and gadget product reviewer

● Volunteered in unofficial Traditional Chinese localisation projects of the Maemo 4 & 5 platformsback in 2009

● Developed Maemo 5 apps for Nokia N900 with Python language and Hildon/Gtk+ frameworks, such as eSpeak GUI Client and Stroke Order Chinese Input Method

● Recipient of the Nokia N950 developer device via MeeGo Community Device Program and developed various MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan apps for Nokia N9

Some interesting facts about women in computing...● Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was the world's first

computer programmer!

● Sophie Wilson designed the original Acorn computer in 1978 as well as the ARM instruction set.

● Marissa Ann Mayer, Vice President of Location and Local Service of Google, designed and developed Google's search interface.

● Mary Lou Jepsen, founder of Pixel Qi and CTO of OLPC.

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Some interesting facts about women in computing...● In Hong Kong, % of women who

had used PCs in the last 12 months (67%) are slightly lower than % of men (70.2%) in 2009.

Women in IT: The Facts, NCWIT's Workforce Alliance

Some interesting facts about women in F/OSS...● Only 1.5% of all Open Source Software developers are women!1

● “The Athena Factor”: Women's Creator versus Executor Roles: 2

1 Nafus, Free/Libre and Open Source Software

2 Hewlett et al, The Athena Factor

So, what happened? Here are some reasons behind...

● Needs as users are not addressed

● Users’ discriminatory language online and offline

● The prevalence of text-based coding systems (as opposed to graphic coding environments)

● The F/OSS community’s male-centric competitive world-view

● Combative hacker ethic

● The difficulty of receiving adequate recognition for their contributions

● Less likely than men to have the level of computing expertise the F/OSS community expects of new entrants

● Women generally first engage with computers at a later age or at a less advanced level compared to men

Women in IT: The Facts, NCWIT's Workforce AllianceNafus, Free/Libre and Open Source SoftwareLin, Gender Dimension of FLOSS Development

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Asia-specific challenges● In Asia, women's education level and

computer literacy are not as high as men's, especially in developing countries

● Gender stereotype on women's employment and family roles

● Lack of intellectual property protection awareness

– High software piracy rate of proprietary software

– Overall ignorance on F/OSS concepts and software license terms by the general public

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Asia-specific challenges● Lack of user community

● Lack of contribution culture

● Sales & services oriented economic structure in some Asian countries resulted in lack of R&D culture

– User:Developer ratio is much higher

– F/OSS is not promoted by the government and in the education sectors

– Prefer short term investment with fast, guaranteed results rather thanlong term investment with slow, uncertain results

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Men and women have different brains!

● Men's strengths

– Better in mathematics, logic and algorithms

– Stronger sense in directions and 3D stuffs

– Better leadership skills

– Result-oriented problem-solving

● Women's strengths

– Better communication skills

– Pay more attention to details

– Process-oriented problem-solving

– More caring and sensitive to what others think

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

What makes a great (F/OSS) product?

Great (F/OSS) Product

Quality coding

Comprehensive Testing & QA

Thorough Research& Analysis

Proper UX Research & User Testing

Easy-to-readDocumentation

Intuitive UI Design

Meaningful Translation& Localisation

Effective Marketing &Targeted Promotion

Women with different background and expertise can definitely help to create great F/OSS products!

Great (F/OSS) Product

Quality coding

Comprehensive Testing & QA

Thorough Research& Analysis

Proper UX Research & User Testing

Easy-to-readDocumentation

Intuitive UI Design

Meaningful Translation& Localisation

Effective Marketing &Targeted Promotion

How can we encourage more women to participate in GNOME and other F/OSS projects?

Expand the user base of GNOME & F/OSS products

● Contributors need not be having Computer Science or any IT background.

● Recommend quality F/OSS products like GNOME, GIMP, Firefox, Chromium, LibreOffice, VLC etc. to your female friends.

● Don't over-emphasise Free Software / Open Source concepts & philosophies – most of them don't even know what source code is! Emphasise the added values over proprietary equivalents.

● If they love to use the products, let users know they can actually contribute to the products they are using.

Users love the products

Users are more willing to contribute

How can we encourage more women to participate in GNOME and other F/OSS projects?

● Adjust your attitudes!

– Great products are not only about great coding. Be less geeky! Speak Earth, human language!

– Respect women with different background, skill sets and expertise.

– Welcome newcomers and be friendly.

– Appreciate and recognise any efforts they contribute.

– Give them chance to learn more about the projects by allowing them to ask silly questions.

– Be consistent on how you communicate with women online and offline.

GNOME Women

● A group dedicated to providing encouragement for women to contribute to GNOME

● GNOME Journal and documentation writers

● Designers for wallpapers, icons, window borders, and themes

● Translators of user interface and documentation

● Marketing material preparation

● System administration

● Newcomer orientation

● Check out more on https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen

Image Courtesy: GNOME Women

Image Courtesy: GNOME Women

GNOME Women Outreach Program● The GNOME Foundation, Google,

Mozilla, Collabora, the Free Software Foundation, and Red Hat sponsored 10 internships this year.

● Projects could be coding, marketing, documentation, design etc.

● Each participant with a $5,000 (USD) stipend. $500 will be sent to participants who have begun their internships, $2250 to participants in good standing with their mentors, and $2250 to participants who have successfully completed their internships.

Image Courtesy: GNOME Women

Ubuntu Women

● Provide mailing list, forum, IRC channel, Launchpad team and blog for Ubuntu women users and contributors.

● Projects handled by women

– Documentation for each Ubuntu release

– Wiki editing and translations● Community outreach via Full Circle

Magazine, Ubuntu Developer Summit, and mentoring programs and courses.

● Check out more on http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/

Image Courtesy: Ubuntu Women

The Ada Initiative

● Launched in February 2011 by Valerie Aurora and Mary Gardiner, named after Ada Lovelace.

● The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media.

● Conduct periodic survey of women in the open technology and culture community, designed to “take the temperature” of women’s participation in open communities.

● Key presentations

● AdaCamp Unconferences

Valerie Aurora, Linux kernel developer

Mary Gardiner, Director of Operations and Research

~ Thank you ~Follow me at:

– Twitter: @amanda_lam

– Plurk: @amandalam

– Sina Weibo: http://weibo.com/amandalam

– LinkedIn: http://hk.linkedin.com/in/amandahoic

– Facebook: http://facebook.com/dadablog

– Blog (in Chinese): http://dadablog.net/