As with ANY organization, diversity is very important for all sorts of reasons. Diversity of thought challenges the status quo. Diversity of perspective encourages a different way of looking at things. Diversity of history and motivation brings together different REASONS to move forward. Diversity of knowledge breeds mentoring and growth for both the teacher and the learner. Diversity, simply put, keeps a group from becoming a closed off echo chamber where ideation and innovation is stifled. A lack of diversity within the ranks of committers and contributors shows potential weaknesses that we, as a community when considering why diversity is valuable, should WANT to understand and consciously decide if it does represent a problem.
The ASF powers much of the software that makes the tech world turn. This alone is an awesome responsibility and one that the community which supports the communities (comdev, namely) has to be aware of. To me, the scope of our "work" becomes an amplification factor for the importance of diversity. I know I am mostly a lurker on these lists, but the diversity discussion is particularly near and dear to some of us... especially those sensitive to the general lack of representation of women in technology (which I'll point out the data shows to be our greatest disparity in participation). As folks generally driven by data and hard facts, I guess I'd like to take this opportunity to raise the REALLY hard questions. The numbers seem to indicate we do, indeed, have some strong disparities (gender and race). Do we think this is a problem? If so, how do we address it? -- Daniel Ruggeri -------- Original Message -------- From: Peter West <p...@pbw.id.au> Sent: December 19, 2016 4:45:49 PM CST To: dev@community.apache.org Subject: Re: Results: ASF Committer Diversity Survey Why does the ASF give a tinker’s damn about diversity? Why are scarce resources being devoted to it? Seriously. — Peter West p...@pbw.id.au “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” > On 19 Dec 2016, at 11:36 pm, Sharan F <sha...@apache.org> wrote: > > Hello Everyone > > A big thank you to everyone that has helped or participated in getting the > Committer Diversity Survey out, and also to all the committers that responded > to the survey. It has been really good to be able to collect this information > and see what it tells us about our committer base. > > I've loaded the main data and graphs from the survey onto the Community > Development wiki (see link below) > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/COMDEV/ASF+Committer+Diversity+Survey+-+2016 > > In total we received 765 responses (out of a 5861 committer base at the time > the survey was run) so around a 13% response rate. > > We also got 111 feedback comments of which 29 did not give their permission > to share or from quote their comments. > > I've categorised all the comments into various themes / topics with the main > ones as follows: > • Suggestions for improvements within the ASF > • Suggestions for improvements to the survey (or any future ones) > • Thanks / positive feedback about the ASF and/or survey > • Feedback and ideas around diversity > Next steps will be: > • Continue to analyse the information and identify any potential > Community Development related actions > • Start discussion threads on the various themes and topics raised to > see if they will result in additional actions > • Discuss feedback and diversity ideas and if necessary, integrate into > diversity strategy > Thanks > Sharan > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org
