Comments on: Passion brings them together, the internet enables them and their diversity helps them succeed

By: stormy

stormy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:14:04 +0000

I think we should celebrate the diversity we have. Figure out how we’ve accomplished it and build on it.
There are lots of different types of diversity and we excel at international and cultural diversity.

By: stormy

stormy — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:13:12 +0000

That’s a good point and I think many groups that think they have nothing in common would find that they share a lot if they communicated as well as open source communities.

By: Thomas Thym

Thomas Thym — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:08:54 +0000

First I thought, too, that communities have high diversity. Later I found out that community members have much more things in common. Sure we come from many different countries but we all share the same passion, the same goals, the same values, the same (organizational / community) culture (e.g. code of conduct). And in most cases you find the same characters. I can’t remember one successful community member who is only talking and do nothing. I meat only very rarely a member who likes to sand in the spotlight or tell others what they have to do.
But I’m sure that communities live diversity.
They are highly diverse in accepting other opinions. And I think that’s one (of many) major success factors of open source communities.
The key to diversity is to accept other opinions, not to be different from others.

By: Diego Escalante Urrelo

Diego Escalante Urrelo — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:10:35 +0000

Whoa, I had no idea we had those demographics. Thanks!

By: printf.net

printf.net — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:08:17 +0000

Hi Stormy,
I know you already specifically acknowledged participation by women as being separate from the diversity you’re talking about, but it still feels really odd to see a blog post saying that free software groups have “figured it out” regarding diversity while we’re at <1% participation by women. Seems to me like the only way we could be doing *worse* at diversity, statistically, is if we somehow found a way to discourage white men from taking part.
So, I think “Free software groups really kind of suck at diversity” would have been as reasonable a conclusion to draw from the same data, and maybe a more helpful one to make so that we don’t get complacent about the status quo, which is really quite awful.