This is bigger than us: building a future for Open Source

If you prefer watching the video of the presentation – it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTwEGxkBG5Y&feature=youtu.be

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This is (not) a tech talk.

Well, actually, it really is one. But mainly, it's about humans. And it covers
- the meaning of "culture"
- status of Free, Libre and Open Source Software today (referred to as "Open Source" here)
- relevance of the community, community culture
- language, pt. 1
- diversity: meaning, what it includes and what to take care for
- software development as an act of representation
- enablement and empowerment
- responsibility through this representation role
- power structures and their consequences
- core values of Open Source: freedom, Decentralisation, Democracy
- Meritocracy
- Community Care (Literally)
- Language, part 2: layers of communication, practical examples
- and finally an excursion to the world of the human body

This talk was given at Arrrrcamp (http://arrrrcamp.be) 2014.

Transcript

1. Marketing, Community Care, Project Management LENA REINHARD @ffffux • Apache CouchDB • The Neighbourhoodie My name is Lena Reinhard or @ffffux on Twitter. I'm specializing in marketing, community care and project management in tech. I’m a committer to the Open Source Project Hoodie, an API for easy and fast web application development, and the NoSQL database Apache CouchDB. I’m also a co-founder and CEO at The Neighbourhoodie, a software development and consulting company. picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro74/6339990758/sizes/l/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/neuro74/ license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.de
2. What you can see behind me, is an acre in southern Germany, close to the village where I grew up. - And this is where this talk begins. –– This acre in southern Germany, this land – is cultivated land. –– This -- is culture. --- The English term “culture” evolved in the mid-15th century and originally meant “the tilling of land” and was about who cared for which parts of land, who did the work on it and who brought in the harvest. There’s also a figurative sense of “culture” which leads to the main case in which we use it today. -> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Etymology
3. CULTURE: the way we understand the world Our modern term “culture” is the expression of the way we act and refers to a group or community which shares common experiences that shape the way its members understand the world -- http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence/culture-and-diversity/main http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulturphilosophie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture
4. THIS IS BIGGER THAN US Building a Future for Open Source I work in the tech world, and I contribute to Open Source. And I love what I do there, because I found amazing people and great projects which have become near and dear to me. Still, the future of Open Source is in danger. This is why in this talk, I want us to take a look at culture in the world of Free, Libre and Open Source Software today (to make it easier for you and me, I’ll refer to “Open Source”, still meaning all of them). Even if you’re not contributing to Open Source projects yourself: most of these topics are applicable to general tech culture and human interactions in general today. ->
5. CULTURE: the betterment of individuals STATUS OF OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY: Powering Mobile, Social, Cloud, Big Data Technology-wise, Open Source is highly relevant - Mobile, Social Media, Cloud Services and Big Data, four very important technologies of our time, rely heavily on Open Source. Open Source is also relevant for business. It contributes 450 billion euros per year only to the European economy. -- So, things are going great in Open Source, right? Let me show you one thing first. more: 114 billion euro by saving the economy money, the results of reinvestments, productivity increase and efficiency are worth over 340 billion euros. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/contribution-open-source-europes-economy-450-billion-yea Mobile – Apple’s iOS libraries includes Open Source libraries – Apple even has their own Apple Public Source License. And, of course, Firefox OS. Social Media – Facebook creates and uses Open Source in their software. The same is with Twitter and Linkedin. Wordpress has given millions of people the opportunity to share their thoughts online. Cloud – Amazon WebServices are powered by Open Source technology like SugarCRM. Amazon RDS relies on MySQL, the Open Source database. Apache is still THE Web server, running large parts of the internet today. Big Data – Hadoop, CouchDB and MongoDB are powering BigData. Big companies rely on Open Source. Some industries rely in important sectors on it. F+O technologies power much of the infrastructure that makes the Internet possible. s.a. http://www.publicpolicy.telefonica.com/blogs/blog/2014/01/10/the-importance-of-free-software-is-not-limited-to-technology-the-open-source-movement-is-evolving-to-encompass-more-areas-of-our- lives/
6. STATUS OF OPEN SOURCE CULTURE: Geek Feminism Wiki Timeline of Sexist Incidents in Geek Communities 0 15 30 45 60 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 Data: geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents The amazing people from “Geek Feminism Wiki” are collecting sexist incidents in geek communities including technology industry, open source software, gaming, and more. This is the number of sexist incidents per year, starting in the year 2000. Today, on October 03, 2014, the number of sexist incidents this year only is 60. Although this graphics does not only display incidents in Open Source Software, it depicts one thing clearly: a lot of things are going wrong in our communities and their culture. And here’s why. -> Data source: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
7. Without the Community we’re lost. (Fedora Community Member, study by Diana Harrelson) Often when you talk about Open Source projects, people quickly refer to “THE COMMUNITY”. So, let’s take a closer look at it. Diana Harrelson, an anthropologist, did scientific research on the Fedora Project. 75% of the respondents to her questions agreed that they felt that the Fedora project really was a community, some adding answers like: “The community *is* the project. …” – and: “Without the Community we’re lost.” -- But when we’re talking about the community and appreciating it - there’s one essential point we must not forget. As Joseph Raz, a philosopher, phrased it: -> source: http://www.cyber-anthro.com/beta-an-exploration-of-fedora%E2%80%99s-online-open-source-development-community/
8. If the culture is decaying, … the options and opportunities open to a group’s members will shrink. (J. Raz) “If the culture is decaying, or if it is discriminated against, the options and opportunities open to its members will shrink.” –- Community is not just about building nice stuff and hanging around with nice people in chat rooms, on mailing lists or on conferences like this one today. -- Every troll, every sexist comment, every harassment towards just one single community member will directly harm this person, the entire community, the product that you’re building and finally Open Source in general - its values, its ideas and its existence. -- -> source: Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (1994), Clarendon Press. Entire quote: “It... [is] a brute fact that our world is organized in large measure around groups with pervasive cultures.... membership of such groups... greatly affects one's opportunities.... If the culture is decaying, or if it is persecuted or discriminated against, the options and opportunities open to its members will shrink.”
9. Picture: NASA, public domain One major deterministic of culture is language. -- Mars Climate Orbiter was a robotic space probe launched by NASA in 1998 to study the climate, atmosphere and surface changes on Mars. This space probe finally got lost in space - it disintegrated due to atmospheric stresses. What was the reason for this robot’s death? It was caused by a human communication failure - four pieces of software producing and expecting data in different units. Two navigators from the teams involved had pointed out those issues, but their concerns had been dismissed. -- What happened here, is briefly described by Conway’s Law. Introduced in 1968 by Melvin Conway, a computer programmer, it states that -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter pic source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Mars_Climate_Orbiter_2.jpg/1126px-Mars_Climate_Orbiter_2.jpg by NASA, public domain
10. Organizations produce designs which are copies of their communication structures (Conway’s Law) “organizations which design systems ... produce designs which are copies of their communication structures”. -- Open Source carries Conway’s Law to extremes. As a scientist phrased it: In Open Source, “there is a hybridism of dialogue and code, where the dialogue is directly embedded in the code’’. They called Open source a ”… network of people and things” that -> source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law http://www2.parc.com/csl/members/nicolas/documents/JCSCW-OSS.pdf
11. Open Source is the materialization of language. (D. Mahendran) “…is constructed through the materialization of language.” In other words: all communications in an Open Source project will have direct impact on the product (like the software) which is built. All communications, - no matter if there are any and if they are peaceful or violent. -- source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law http://www2.parc.com/csl/members/nicolas/documents/JCSCW-OSS.pdf
12. Open Source is the materialization of language. (D. Mahendran) 3,231 languages Screenshot: endangeredlanguages.com I want to show you a part of the “Endangered Languages” project. Every dot you can see on this map excerpt stands for one of over 3,231 languages that are currently at risk of becoming extinct. Language loss is no new phenomenon, and even if a few of those languages got lost, large parts of the world population could still talk. - So why should we care if languages are lost? -- Let me ask you two things first: - who of you ever contributed to a FLOSS Project? … and: - who of you is a programmer or has ever done anything related to programming, like editing a bit of HTML or CSS? … … … As people who can deal with programming languages, you know one of their core functionalities is that: - > https://docs.google.com/document/d/19MvWf22roO_egGdcma1rSAplMrQitKskxL3xn0gBgSU/edit# (Screenshot: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/#/3/-45.761/275.454/0/100000/0/low/mid/high/dormant/awakening/unknown )
13. LANGUAGE SHAPES REALITY Language shapes reality. One change in an expression in the source code of an application can affect everything. (Or break everything, you may have heard of that. :) ) Language is an essential part of our culture and shapes the way we express ourselves. And this is why when a language disappears into oblivion, we are all diminished. -- Thus, silencing people and their voices in Open Source destables and endangers each and every one of us. We in Open Source have to stop silencing people when they speak out about threats, mobbing, sexism or other topics that show our broken culture. -- source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0627_020628_wadedavis.html
14. THE FUTURE OF OPEN SOURCE WILL BE DETERMINED BY ITS CULTURE Open Source is the materialization of language, and our community culture influences everything we do. This is why we have to take even more care of the culture in Open Source communities - because the future of Open Source will be mainly determined by its culture. -- -> Let’s see which other aspects we have to care for in our communities and start this with an excursion to biology. ---
15. SIMPLE, NON-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES ARE MORE EASILY UPSET AND MORE VULNERABLE As Charles Elton, an Ecologist, argued, "simple [non-diverse] communities [are] more easily upset than … richer ones; that is, [they’re] more vulnerable …". -- In biology, there’s a special research field for this topic, and part of it is the so-called “stability-diversity hypothesis”. In short, this hypothesis states that the more diverse a community is, the more stable and productive it is. A great example for a space which is diverse by default -> source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ecology/Community_succession_and_stability http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6783/full/405228a0.html#B8
16. SIMPLE, NON-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES ARE MORE EASILY UPSET AND MORE VULNERABLE Picture: N. Tackaberry, CC BY-ND 2.0 are rain forests. Typically, they possess a great deal of species diversity. Around 40-75% of all biotic species are native to the rainforests. -- Same is with data :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest picture: N. Tackaberry, https://www.flickr.com/photos/23629083@N03/6869912427 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.de
17. SIMPLE, NON-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES ARE MORE EASILY UPSET AND MORE VULNERABLE Picture: USFWS Pacific Region, CC BY 2.0 Coral Reefs – they occupy less than 0.1% of the world's ocean surface, which is around the size of France, yet they provide a home for 25% of all marine species. -- -> data, quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef picture: USFWS Pacific Region, https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/sizes/l/in/photostream/ License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.de data, quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef picture: USFWS Pacific Region, https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwspacific/5565696408/sizes/l/in/photostream/ License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.de
18. DIVERSITY IS THE DEFAULT. if it’s not diverse, it’s broken Diversity means variety and dissimilarity. It is a state and process of involving people who are different from each other in a group, and it aims to create an inclusive culture. Diversity is in natural settings usually nothing we have to implement or fix – it’s the Default. In artificial settings, like Open Source communities are, we have to take care for diversity ourselves. First, diversity is just the right thing to do. As various studies show, diversity also enables us to solve complex problems better and faster, be more creative and stimulated through persistent exposure to minority perspectives, make better decisions and generate more innovation. This means: if a community is not diverse, it’s broken. -- ->
19. Diversity includes age, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, personal background, gender and far more.
20. People do not fit into a single box, they fall into a variety of different dimensions. Everyone of us has had different life experiences and perceives the world differently. Thus, we need to care as well about the intersections of these groups. Let’s take a look at some examples: ->
21. WE NEED DIVERSITY IN genders According to the 2013 FLOSS poll, 89 percent of contributors to Open Source are men, 11 percent are women – but this is not just about a binary gender system here. Currently, there is so little space for LGBTIQ* people in the Open Source culture of our times that there are not even numbers. And it’s worst for people who are marginalized twice or even more - because they are e.g. women of colour. -> sources http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-are-185-million-software-developers-in-the-world-but-which-country-has-the-most/ http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240676/India_to_overtake_U.S._on_number_of_developers_by_2017 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762181.html sex ratio: 1.07 (107 male : 100 females) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio female devs http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-in-tech-female-developers-by-the-numbers/ female devs http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statistics-show-its-worse-than-you-think/ females in tech http://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/2011-04-05_JHU.pdf females in OS http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/FLOSS FLOSS poll http://flosspols.org/deliverables/D16HTML/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.htm
22. WE NEED DIVERSITY IN genders ethnicities We also need diversity in ethnicity. White people are still forming the major mass of people in Open Source, and we urgently need to get people of all ethnicities into Open Source projects. ->
23. WE NEED DIVERSITY IN genders ethnicities skills We also need aim for diversity in skills and get non-coding people like designers, writers, people with organisation skills and many more. -- -> further reading: For details about attracting non-coders to OSS communities, see e.g. this talk I gave recently: https://speakerdeck.com/ffffux/confessions-of-an-alien-attracting-non-coding-experts-to-your-open-source- project-1 Apache quote: http://community.apache.org/contributors/
24. WE NEED DIVERSITY IN genders ethnicities skills ideas, backgrounds We need diversity in ideas and backgrounds - the broader the amount of ideas, backgrounds and experiences in our communities, the further we can go. ->
25. WE NEED DIVERSITY IN genders ethnicities skills ideas, backgrounds and more And we need to aim for more. A lack of diversity leads to serious issues and destabilizes the complete community. These issues can exemplarily be illustrated with an anecdote like one from Google which they just published last week. When YouTube launched their video upload app for iOS, 5-10% of videos uploaded by users were upside-down. Were people shooting videos incorrectly? No. The early design was the problem. The YouTube app was designed for right-handed users, but phones are usually rotated 180 degrees when held in left hands. Without realizing it, the YouTube app team had created an app that worked best for their almost exclusively right-handed developer team. Although this is a very simple example, it can as well be taken as a metaphor. And it depicts: working on more diversity in our communities should be a daily task for everyone of us. -- -- -> case source: http://googleblog.blogspot.jp/2014/09/you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know-how.html
26. When everybody is making technology, the technology they make will be for everybody. (A. Hartwig) Or, to phrase it like Aaron Hartwig recently did on Twitter: “When everybody is making technology, the technology they make will be for everybody.” -- Community means the appreciation of diversity and variety. Community culture is our daily answer to the question who (which people) and what (which kind of contributions) is being welcomed and valued in our projects. -- -> Quote: @aaron_hartwig https://twitter.com/aaron_hartwig/status/460887193826111489
27. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS BUILT FOR PURSUING ITS VALUES There are strong values and goals behind Open Source Software development which are the reason why it exists and is kept alive. Some of these values are e.g.: providing alternatives to closed- source software, enabling independence and driving innovation. But there is one more reason why Open Source Software is built. -- So let’s think about software development in general. Software is built to perform useful work, run a computer system, solve problems, make things better. But -- make things better for whom? -- >
28. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS BUILT FOR PURSUING ITS VALUES USERS Software is built for people. It’s built for users. Any software exists for being used by someone somewhere. -- ->
29. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IS BUILT FOR PURSUING ITS VALUES USERS Of the complete world population, only 0.26 percent are software developers. That’s 18 Million people in total, and this number already includes hobbyists who are writing code only in their spare time. Which means: for every software developer out there, there are -> data sources: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-are-185-million-software-developers-in-the-world-but-which-country-has-the-most/ http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240676/India_to_overtake_U.S._on_number_of_developers_by_2017 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762181.html
30. 399 people who have other professions or just don’t code. Now let me just give these 399 people a few more colours to get them closer to reality … ->
31. and there we go. :) When we’re talking about software, we can’t have this conversation without talking about users. Software is built for them. And each of those 399 people have their very own, individual needs (and even our developer themselves who will also be a software user). -- This means that
32. BUILDING SOFTWARE IS AN ACT OF REPRESENTATION building software is an act of representation. Many of us, the people who are here today, are very privileged, and our realities are very far away from the reality of millions of people on this planet. -- The users of our software are a very diverse group, and representation means responsibility. As people who work on software, we have this representation role to act according to, and this is why -> pic: Flickr / vnysia (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/vnysia/4598569232 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ quote from: http://indietech.org/ Manifesto
33. THERE’S NO JUSTIFICATION FOR NON-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES and non-diverse communities working on software can not be justified. Creativity is a driver of good design and engineering. It is the ability to see connections and relationships where others have not, and it’s the result of making unexpected connections between things we already know. Hence, creativity depends on our life experiences. This is why diversity is essential to good design and engineering on a very fundamental level. Only if we ourselves are a diverse group of people who thus are capable of imagining the wide array of possible values, we can uncover an equally wide array of possible design approaches and results which then can offer built-in solutions for a wide range of people. Only moving beyond self-referential modes will enable us to develop infrastructure, processes, products and work that resonate with the broader population. --
34. By giving people more ways to speak up and more tools to take action, we keep decreasing the gap between what we wish for and what we can do about it. (S. Godin) “By giving people more ways to speak up and more tools to take action, we keep decreasing the gap between what we wish for and what we can do about it.” – was recently written by the author Seth Godin. Fulfilling our representation role properly when we’re building software means that we acknowledge the needs of people in diverse communities. That we work on software that resonates with the diverse group of humans on this planet. And that we build tools that empower them and enable them to solve their problems themselves. - And yes, part of this is education. This is what enablement and empowerment really mean. -> Quote: Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/09/wishing-vs-doing.html
35. The JavaScript community loves "good enough" solutions, where "good enough" means "horribly broken except for my case" (Y. Katz) Misrepresentation leads to serious issues, one of them illustrated for one programming language community here: - -> “The JavaScript community loves "good enough" solutions, where "good enough" means "horribly broken except for my case"”. We already have representation problems in our developer communities themselves, and it’s not getting better for people outside these communities. We have to fulfill our representation roles properly in our communities so we can finally enable people to really -> Quote: @aaron_hartwig https://twitter.com/aaron_hartwig/status/460887193826111489
36. REPRESENTATION THROUGH DIVERSITY ENABLES TRUST trust the software we’re building. –– I want to give you two examples which depict the trust issue we’re exposing our users to far too often. The “Queer Chorus”, a choir group in Austin, Texas, had a Facebook group for its choir’s members. The president of the chorus added two members of the choir to this Facebook group. What the president didn’t know: Facebook automatically told all their friends that they were now members of the Queer chorus Facebook Group. Thing is: they both had decided to not inform their friends and families about them being queer. It was Facebook that did that for them - by inadvertently exposing this information to their friends and families. Facebook made a choice, instead of leaving it up to them. -- -- -> source: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444165804578008740578200224
37. GRINDR SHOWS THE PRECISE DISTANCE BETWEEN USERS AND THEREFORE MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO LOCATE THEM. A second example. “Grindr shows the precise distance between users and therefore makes it possible to locate them.” Grindr is a dating app, mainly targetting homosexual people. It’s said that it’s being used by 6 million people in 192 countries. Which means: it’s also used in countries with anti-homosexuals-legislation, where homosexuals are persecuted, imprisoned and killed. – Amongst these countries are Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and more. -- When you want to use Grindr on your mobile phone, you share your location with the app and it displays profiles of people and their distance to you without telling you in which direction they are from your current position. Thus, it doesn’t show you the other people’s direct position, right? The quote you see on this slide is from an email sent to Grindr LLC, the company responsible for Grindr. It was sent in February this year, and it was sent because of a problem with Grindr and this “distance to you” functionality. This problem is called “Triangulation”, and it enabled you to see the actual position of a person – even though this was not a direct feature of Grindr. - So it was possible to see where Grindr users were: --> sources: http://www.society30.com/privacy-issues-grindr/ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/dating-app-fuer-homosexuelle-jagd-auf-schwule-via-grindr-1.2123810 http://www.cairoscene.com/ViewArticle.aspx?AId=13967-Egyptian-Cops-Using-Grindr-To-Hunt-Gays http://americablog.com/2014/08/grindr-users-unwittingly-giving-away-exact-location.html https://grindrmap.neocities.org/
38. Screenshots: Americablog.com in the U.S. senate office buildings, the British House of Commons, as well as in Moscow, just north of the Red Square, and in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pointed to the problem with the email you’ve seen before, Grindr reacted with a blogpost – telling users: “if you have problems with the locating functionality, you can turn it off anytime”. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature! As if this were true. It wasn’t as easy as that. Grindr had not enabled their users to make an informed decision, it had kept them unknowing that by enabling that other users could see their distance to them, it would also be possible to find out their precise location. -- sources: http://www.society30.com/privacy-issues-grindr/ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/dating-app-fuer-homosexuelle-jagd-auf-schwule-via-grindr-1.2123810 http://www.cairoscene.com/ViewArticle.aspx?AId=13967-Egyptian-Cops-Using-Grindr-To-Hunt-Gays http://americablog.com/2014/08/grindr-users-unwittingly-giving-away-exact-location.html https://grindrmap.neocities.org/
39. Screenshots: Americablog.com And this misinformation of users even lead to serious incidents, leading to headlines like “Egyptian Cops using Grindr to hunt gays”. Reports say, it lead to people being arrested. -- It took Grindr LLC 7 months to fix this serious problem. And all of this from a company that proclaims “There is nothing that matters to us more than the safety and security of our user and the Grindr community.” --- Both these stories about Facebook and Grindr are about responsibility. –– Tech is not neutral. Many more people have been stung by accidentally revealing secrets online that were easier kept in the past. We need to keep examples like these in mind and build software that respects its users. -- -> -- sources: http://www.society30.com/privacy-issues-grindr/ http://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/dating-app-fuer-homosexuelle-jagd-auf-schwule-via-grindr-1.2123810 http://www.cairoscene.com/ViewArticle.aspx?AId=13967-Egyptian-Cops-Using-Grindr-To-Hunt-Gays http://americablog.com/2014/08/grindr-users-unwittingly-giving-away-exact-location.html https://grindrmap.neocities.org/
40. REPRESENTATION THROUGH DIVERSITY ENABLES TRUST AND FREEDOM The topic of proper user representation is also linked with one of the core values and goal of Open Source: Freedom. Freedom is the idea of giving users choices, power and control over the tools they use. It’s often stated that users are enabled to see how the apps they’re using work, check if they’re secure and change them if they want to. -- So, let me ask you another question: who of you has at least once read the source code of your mail server that your email provider runs for you? ------ http://www.wired.com/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before
41. REPRESENTATION THROUGH DIVERSITY ENABLES TRUST AND FREEDOM So we have to ask: how many people actually can do this? How many people have not only the interest, but also the resources and knowledge to check the source code of their software? How close to people’s actual realities can this idea of freedom practically be? The idea of long-term freedom for users through Open Source is a great goal which we have to perceive. But we have to take care to not make this a patronizing ideal that forgets about many people’s realities. Instead, we have to build products understanding people’s needs and their capabilities in diverse communities, so we can make this ideal of freedom a thing which is closer to people’s realities than it is now. --- Another danger we’re currently facing is shown by what happened to the Mayas. -> http://www.wired.com/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before
42. Picture: Sergio Somavilla, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Although their culture and civilization where highly-developed, it declined and suddenly disappeared around 800-900BC. It is said that this was the result of a combination of prolongued droughts and extensive, long-lasting internal conflicts. Some archaeologists add that the Maya "collapse" was merely a collapse of the ruling elites. These theories can’t be proven 100%, but the Maya show us that it's neither change nor technology that threatens the integrity of a culture. It is -- –> http://archaeology.about.com/cs/latinamerica/a/copan.htm Picture: Sergio Somavilla, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/ssomavilla/2288193041/sizes/l/in/gallery-voyagevobe-72157625044039205/ License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
43. IF THE NEEDS OF INDIVIDUALS ARE SUPPRESSED, SOCIAL SYSTEMS CAN BECOME UNSTABLE power — the crude face of domination. If the needs of individuals in one culture are continually suppressed, social systems can become unstable. --- One person in the Fedora Project study said: “I used to believe that it was a community, but it seems more like a grouping of various anarchists and monarchists who think everyone else is like them.” We really have to take care to avoid cliques and elites which exclude community members and enforce those unhealthy power structures that destabilize our communities. We have to stop the marginalization of people, the worshipping of heroes, bro culture, “rock stars”, “code unicorns” and people who cannot be criticised anymore because of their status. -> Source / Diana Harrelson’s research: http://www.cyber-anthro.com/beta-an-exploration-of-fedora%E2%80%99s-online-open-source-development-community/
44. DECENTRALISATION & DEMOCRACY This leads us to two other core concepts and goals of Open Source which are decentralisation and democracy. The Open Source model includes the concept of differing agendas and approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies. These decentralisation approaches include peer production and public availability of all sources, end products and documentation. The development in Open Source is based on the so-called “Bazaar Model”, in which roles of the people involved are not clearly defined and that states that users should be treated as co-developers. This was actually the case in the early days of the movement, when Software developer bases were very close to their users. Feedback from them was not just welcome, it was vital: it ensured that the code met actual needs, which powered its deployment and hence further comments. Thus, eventually, users and developers were both contributors to the software. But as the systems matured, users changed from being integral elements of the community to playing an only marginal role. - -> -- sources: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Can-open-source-be-democratic-1663702.html%3Fpage=2 http://creative-destruction.me/2012/08/29/is-open-source-democratic/ data source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
45. DECENTRALISATION & DEMOCRACY This has led to a widening democracy deficit in open source, with users increasingly isolated from the people writing the code. Today, we’re far from a state where many Open Source projects would even try to engage with “normal users”. Even Data shows that Open Source Software is not quite as decentralised and democratic as it often proclaims to be - analysis shows that of five billion bytes of Open Source code, 74% was written by the most active 10% authors. -- -> -- sources: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Can-open-source-be-democratic-1663702.html%3Fpage=2 http://creative-destruction.me/2012/08/29/is-open-source-democratic/ data source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
46. DECENTRALISATION & DEMOCRACY CAN ONLY BECOME REALITY WITH DIVERSITY Democracy and decentralisation in Open Source will both require more diverse communities to enable more stable democratic processes, getting the products we build closer to their users and building closer relationships with them and achieving real decentralisation. -- -- -> --- data source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software
47. MERITOCRACY: a metastory Open Source projects often also proudly refer to their “meritocracy”, the belief that those with merit float to the top - that they should be given more opportunities and higher rewards. Funnily and sadly at the same time, this term “meritocracy” was originally coined by Michael Young in 1958 as a negative example for a system with highly critical approaches. – and actually, to point out that such a system could never exist. Noah Slater recently described meritocracy as a sort of metastory which we repeat to each other and which we use to construct other stories that then explain e.g. why people are included or excluded from our project. Current accounts of participation in projects tend to gloss over the political maneuvering that often takes place around the integration of new members. Instead, they describe this over-simplified and supposedly meritocratic process broadly inspired from the ideal of the scientific world, where the best ideas and people get naturally selected based on their talent and peer-review. Meritocracy is often celebrated as objective, whilst the homogeneity of Open Source and various studies show that it exacerbates the lack of diversity and institutionalises structural inequality. -- This also includes that ->
48. FIND NEW MODELS TO VALUE CONTRIBUTION we have to find new models to value contribution. When we’re thinking about building the future of Open Source, we have to include those who have less opportunity, time and money that would allow them to freely contribute. We need to re-think what is being valued in Open Source projects, especially with the needs of marginalized people in our minds. ---- -> Quotes: Ashe Dryden, http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community
49. DON’T CARE FOR CONTRIBUTORS. And our main question should be: who do we care for – contributors who contribute? Or do we care for people? This question is an essential one and a topic that is near and dear to me. People in our communities experience not only good, but also bad times, burnouts, mental health issues like depression, and much more. These are serious issues which we can’t ignore, and some of them are even enforced through structural inequality, meritocracy and community-related issues.
50. DON’T CARE FOR CONTRIBUTORS. CARE FOR PEOPLE. We as members of Open Source Communities have to implement a culture where mental health issues are not stigmatized, where we talk openly about them and lead have open discussions about how to avoid people from burning out through Open Source contributions, -- a culture in which people are heard and they know that there are people who care for them. We have to make sure to be there for the people in our projects – NOT because we want to keep them contributing, but because we care for the people. ---- ->
51. THE EXPLICIT THE IMPLICIT LANGUAGE SHAPES REALITY We’ve already seen the relevance of language: language shapes reality. In her talk yesterday, KaWu talked about asking vs. guessing culture. Arjan as well mentioned the relevance of language in his talk. I want to take up the great points they made and talk about the explicit and the implicit here. The explicit and the implicit are both parts of our communication. The explicit is often characterized as the direct way of expressing things in saying or writing. Explicit communication is usually specific information conveyed in written or spoken words. Language is extremely powerful, and being explicit about things you feel, mean or want can be very helpful in human interactions. The implicit, its contrary, is described as the more indirect way. Implicit communication refers to things we do, individually or collectively. It can be body language, and even the decision to not communicate at all is an implicit communication. Implicit communication can be just as powerful and effective as explicit communication. And sometimes, our implicit communication can even erase everything we communicated explicitely. --- And: Culture is also part of our implicit communication.
52. THE EXPLICIT THE IMPLICIT Now we as people usually send and receive both messages – the explicit ones as well as the implicit ones. And, ideally, the explicit and implicit communication we receive ->
53. ♥ THE EXPLICIT THE IMPLICIT align and lead to a consistent, coherent and harmonious overall picture. On both layers, the explicit and the implicit one, all of us are communicating all the time, even when we’re not aware of it. This is why we have to watch carefully our communications on these layers.
54. CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS WORDS WISELY. We have to watch out carefully what we communicate explicitly. Here’s a few examples for what to watch out for: If you don’t have one yet, implement a Code of Conduct for your projects and events that sets explicit limitations to behavior. Still, any Code of Conduct is completely useless if there are no people who really take care of it. It is not worth any millisecond of loading time on a website if there are no people who who actually enforce it. And it’s worth rubbish if people in our communities or at our events can’t trust us that this enforcement is definitely going to happen. Neither will a Code of Conduct fix any diversity problem. It can support work on diversity topics – but it can’t be the only thing that is done in terms of more diversity. A Code of Conduct also will not directly make our communities a safe space for people. We have to think specifically what we can do to provide safe spaces for people in our communities, and how we can specifically support marginalised people. ->
55. CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS WORDS WISELY. We have to take care of what we actually communicate and how. What language is being used in our communities? Is it comprehensive and accessible, also for people who don’t know our insider jokes yet? How do we handle swearing, which some people are strongly opposed to? And how do we react when people say they’re feeling uncomfortable with a specific use of language or terminology? Do we talk about diversity in our communities? Do we talk about in which terms we mean diversity, what our motivations behind work on diversity are, which approaches we could choose and how we’ll work on this? Have we ensured that not mainly marginalised people work on diversity? Have we asked for feedback outside of our communities and also from people who don’t have the same background as we do? Is improving our community culture a topic which we regularly talk about and which everybody is working on? -- ->
56. WHAT DO WE COMMUNICATE IMPLICITELY? We have to care as well about our implicit communication. -- Is our project hosted on GitHub or a similar platform? Then it may be open for developers, but it excludes non-coders like designers or writers by default. Is the major mass of people in our projects white men? Then it can be extremely hard for women or people of colour to join you. -- Is our so-called “diversity work” limited to posting one blog post per year, a statement on Twitter and sending one or two emails, or are we really putting effort into it? -- How is diversity handled at our events? Is it just about making sure at least one or two women speak, or do we really care about this topic, read about it, learn about it and see what matters if we want to create inclusive events? - ->
57. WHAT DO WE COMMUNICATE IMPLICITELY? What about our software documentation? Is it referring to users as “he” and using male terminology and non-gendered language? Then why should women feel addressed? -- How do we handling consumption of alcohol at our events? Is this something that is encouraged? Consumption of alcohol has lead to serious issues in the past and can set people and entire events in danger. It will keep people from even attending. -- Do we discuss everything extensively on mailing lists, and do we also make decisions there? Staying up-to-date with these discussions takes a lot of time – time that especially marginalised people don’t have, e.g. because they have less spare time or have to do care work. It excludes them by default. -- Or do most or even all of our community members contribute voluntarily in their spare time? Good for us! But this again excludes by default people who have less spare time and / or earn less money which would allow them to freely contribute. -- And many, many more. We have to raise our awareness towards what our words and our actions tell people. We have to find ways to become better humans, better communities and better places for people, and work on improving our toxic culture. --- -> further reading on gendered language in software documentation: http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/gendered-language-feature-or-bug-in-software-documentation further reading on gendered language in software documentation: http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/gendered-language-feature-or-bug-in-software-documentation
58. You know that in our bodies, we have arteries and veins, both part of our circulatory system. Arteries are the blood vessels that carry blood away from the heart, mostly oxygenated blood. There is a special coronary artery which is located directly at our heart. Its job is to supply blood to the heart muscle and thus keep it working. -- Still, it sometimes happens that there is -> Pic source: http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/entry_photo_images/7913847/heart_shutterstock_large_verge_medium_landscape.jpg
59. Picture: Coronary Artery Disease, Wikimedia Commons plaque building up along the inner walls of the arteries of the heart. This plaque narrows the arteries and reduces blood flow to the heart. It can progress without anyone noticing evidence for it for years and what happens there is called coronary artery disease. As it progresses, it leads to lack of oxygen in the body’s cells, can cause chest pain and finally lead to a heart attack and death. pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blausen_0259_CoronaryArteryDisease_02.png Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_artery_disease#Treatment
60. In Open Source, our communities are our hearts. They nourish the entire body, our projects. Without our communities, Open Source is lost. Narrowing the communities by limiting and restricting their spaces leads to serious problems - for individuals, communities, the products we’re building and finally Open Source in general. -- There are already many initiatives and individuals in Open Source that are working hard on all of this. These people and their allies are spending a significant amount of time on improving the culture we have in Open Source today. Some of them are e.g. black girls code, Ashe Dryden, LGBTech, ModelViewCulture, Trans*H4ck, RailsGirls and many more. The least we all should do, is: listen to them. Support their work. Share what they’re saying. We must not wait for others, especially marginalised people, to educate us. We have to educate ourselves about community culture, diversity and learn what we can do every day to make Open Source a better place for everyone. And transfer this to the communities we’re all in. ----- We have to widen our communities, welcome and appreciate everyone - to ensure our heart keeps beating. And to ensure that Open Source can have a future. Because Open Source can only have a future if it does everything to be inclusive. Thank you. All individuals & organizations: http://adainitiative.org/ - https://www.gittip.com/ashedryden/ - http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ - http://ethicalco.de/ - http://girlswhocode.com/ - https://www.gittip.com/juliepagano/ - http:// lesbianswhotech.org/ - https://www.lgbtech.org/ - http://modelviewculture.com/ - http://railsgirls.com/ - http://phpwomen.org/ - https://www.gittip.com/shanley/ - http://www.transhack.org/ - find more organizations here http://dayssincelasttechincident.com/