At work, we had a speaker who talked about his company's diversity hiring approach. I don't recall specifics, but I believe it was a bank that was pretty well-known for having good representation across race and gender -- which was the basis for the invitation to come speak.

The bit that stood out for me was the claim that they never hired merely to increase diversity. Instead, they hired only based on the merit of applicants.

To achieve diversity, however, they were very aggressive about inviting minority applicants to apply, for example, posting job notices in places where under-represented groups were likely to see the notices.

Applying that idea to OSS, one could imagine active outreach as a means of increasing diversity among contributors.

The larger question of why one should care about having diverse contributors has, I think, been largely addressed by other commenters already. In addition to the UI issues others have mentioned, I might also guess that, from the perspective of Free Software Foundation, they probably also want to understand and engage minorities' privacy concerns.

Are you saying that people who are underrepresented in the free software community have a natural aversion to contributing to free software? That there are no outside forces impacting their choices, but it's something inherent in their character or genetic makeup?

I don't believe this to be true. If it's not true, then there do exist external factors that impact people's ability or desire to contribute.

> Why is this necessary?

I wouldn't claim the statement "Underrepresented people should spend more time contributing to free software" is some universal truth. Far from it. But from the perspective of the FSF, they presumably believe in their mission, and believe that increased diversity and inclusion would improve the community and its ability to achieve its mission.

That would be my reasoning. We need to get people who would never see themselves as being able to develop software because they never went to university or don't have the 'brains' to get into it. There's a lot of wasted brainpower because of the false impression that coding is something for an elite few.

Am I missing something here or you really think we speak spanish in Brazil????

I saw that happening time and time again - something I didn't consider important at all, was essential for other folks. One example - if no blind people use your software, you'll never know how hard or easy it is for them - hence you'll never get a blind person to be your contributor, since it's unusable to them.

I'm not sure what that term means. If anything, the politically correct thing - the acceptable thing - is to take shots at "political correctness".

But let's have a clear definition and say how it applies to something in particular in this discussion.

On the other hand, I've seen seemingly endless instances of people using political correctness as a strawman to blow off disagreements or criticism without having to address them. It's like a blank check for assholes: if they think that all the people who think they are assholes are a bunch of brainwashed PC zombies, that's a lot easier to deal with than looking in the mirror, thinking about it for like 2 seconds, and maybe growing up a little. Nowadays anti-political correctness seems like an infinitely more widespread and toxic influence on our culture than any supposed PC conspiracy, in the sense that it shuts down honest discussion and keeps people from talking about real issues or understanding each other's perspectives.

Ironically a lot anti-PC hysteria uses verbiage about how we should all be up front and direct and brutally honest, but in practice it ends up doing the exact opposite. Nowadays anti-PC hysteria isn't people saying "tell me how you REALLY feel, don't mince words, let's talk straight about real issues"; rather, it's a mostly homogenous group of people saying "shut up and go away, I don't care about seeing things from your point of view, how dare you act like you're special enough to have your own perspective".

You've never worked in an office? It has an impact all the time because there are many subjects not safe to discuss.

I agree with you, in the sense that cultures heavier on PC typically have a bit more self-censorship than they might otherwise. However, my experience so far is basically that nothing of value was lost!

I can kinda sympathize with the first guy who gets in trouble for stepping over the (newly instated, sometimes implicit) line.

But as far as actual effects on the office? Mostly just a work place that feels more like a place where important work happens and less like a high school lunch table.

I'd be curious to know why you think the typically censored topics add anything of business value to a work place.

One I often see personally is not being able to discriminate based on communication ability out of fear of being labelled racist.

If I step back a step, the reality is that I am always more comfortable communicating with people like me, with an accent I'm comfortable with, who use my kind of vocabulary, who use similar grammar to mine. Guess what? I can effectively communicate with a lot more people than the ones who score highly on my personal communication scale.

Edit: I should add that this is something that should be discussed openly during the recruitment process.

edit: Again, if you are downvoting me, please explain so I can understand. I'm not arguing for the sake of argument.

Even if you want to argue that the reasons people have for deciding not to get involved in open source are wrong or that those intangibles shouldn't affect open source projects for some other reason, the fact is that the pattern will nevertheless self-reinforce and affect open source by deterring more hands from coming on deck.

If x% of the white male population is developing on open source, but only x% * y% of the non-white-male population is, and getting people interested in open source isn't a zero-sum game, then making y as close to 100 as possible can only be a good thing. Making a concerted effort to recruit diversely, it is hoped, will have accelerating returns as intentional involvement of diverse contributors will lead to more and more organic involvement of diverse contributors.

The goal of getting more hands on deck by going after low hanging fruit (ie people who are capable of contributing to open source but currently aren't doing so because they feel uncomfortable or excluded) seems to be a worthier goal than "fostering an environment that accepts its inequity in a positive manner."

If you disagree, you are welcome to flesh out your proposal and submit it to the FSF as a candidate high priority project.

  but to change the widespread perception that treatment of different groups is not equitable

> ...whether or not people submit code is often silently affected by intangibles, like whether or not they think they'll be welcomed into the community and treated with respect and as an equal.

> Even if you want to argue that the reasons people have for deciding not to get involved in open source are wrong or that those intangibles shouldn't affect open source projects for some other reason, the fact is that the pattern will nevertheless self-reinforce and affect open source by deterring more hands from coming on deck.

Do you know how you appreciate your opinions being evaluated on their merits rather than through a political lens? Social movements -- which is something that the free software movement explicitly considers itself to be -- cannot hold anyone to that expectation and expect to make inroads with them. Just as countless entrepreneurs have commented in various threads on HN observing that making your product is never as hard as marketing it, so too are the challenges of convincing people to change...well, damn near anything, inclusive of how they think about the ethical relationship between people who make software and people who use it.

This new high priority project is, in the most cynical and utilitarian interpretation, very good marketing. More likely, it was proposed and approved by people who see an inherent value in it that you might not. If you still don't understand that value, there probably aren't a whole lot of other ways to explain it than have already been offered to you in this thread.

It's unfortunate that people look at trivia like gender and ethnicity in such circumstances; but it's a fact of human behaviour. If potential contributors look at a project and don't see anyone who "looks like them", they're unlikely to contribute; so projects which want to maximize contributions are well advised to seek ways to "look inclusive".

(And this goes beyond open source software, of course. My university's computer science program has seen a significant uptick in applications from females after going out of their way to select photos of female students for recruiting material.)

In short, it's a matter of overcoming cognitive biases.

First on sex/gender: I feel that hormonal differences create psychological differences in the norms between genders. This is why men are generally more aggressive and violent(see higher incarceration rates) and women are more nurturing. These differences lead to people in general choosing careers that reflect their psychology, and forced diversity hurts those that do best in their field.

Then on ethnicity, I feel many of the differences come from both differences in opportunity(which should be overcome) and differences in cultural and social norms, which lead to people choosing different careers.

In my opinion, forced diversity hurts those who would normally gravitate towards those fields because they are displaced by someone who doesn't necessarily want to be there, but just sees opportunity.

Again, I'm not looking to fight. I'd love you opinion on why I'm right or wrong.

On the contrary, not having enough diversity can and does put off those who would otherwise make great contributors.

As such, I would oppose any attempts to establish quotas or even aspirational targets for diversity; as you say, forced diversity has negative consequences -- not just for the organization, but also for the individuals involved.

But as much as we shouldn't be trying to bring in individuals who aren't really interested, we need to make sure we're not keeping out individuals who are interested... in a sense, it's more important to look diverse than it is to be diverse.

For example, there was a study done on violent men in prisons and testosterone. The theory that was tested was if testosterone levels were indicator of more violence, for which the data revealed was not the case. Further studies showed that so long testosterone is within natural occurring levels, aggression was not effect by testosterone.

In a wider context, yes, it's a bit more complicated, but Free Software? As a movement, there's power in numbers, and looking to increase that number via a focussed effort on minority groups is simply a smart move.

There's strong evidence that genetic differences account for some behavioural differences between men and women. The ones you suggest do make it clear why you'd expect a skewed distribution of genders in fields such as the army or midwifery. It's much less clear that genetic differences should lead to such an underrepresentation of women in tech fields; in this case I suspect that culture and social inertia are a large part of the explanation.

We're talking about open-source/Free software here, not working in a corporation. Volunteer FOSS work is all done remotely. If you asked me what the contributors to, say, The GIMP looked like, what sex they were, and what their ethnicities were, I could not tell you other than to merely make a wild guess. I suppose I could go look up their names and then make very good guesses based on those, but that's a lot of work; it's not like the contributor list pops up every time you start the application. FOSS volunteers frequently never see each other in person, and simply send in code contributions. They're not interviewed in-person, and they don't have to show up in-person to an office full of other people. If anything, it should be the most egalitarian form of work worldwide!

For most users, FOSS software is made by people who are utterly nameless and faceless. So I really don't see why this should be a factor to potential contributors. It should be the one place where they can feel safest about not being singled out and treated unfairly for their sex/age/ethnicity/other factor. There's not even a requirement that they use their real name! No one's stopping them from making a new email address at [email protected] and contributing with that if they're really paranoid about being treated unfairly.

Ah, but there are forces that keep people from contributing, or at least increase the amount of effort required considerably. These forces are not evenly distributed, and there are several dynamics operating that actually increase the effect many of these forces have on members of underrepresented groups.

So, given that this is to some extent a self-reinforcing phenomenon, if we want the community to look like it welcomes all comers, we not only have to be welcoming (which we aren't doing that great on in the first place), but also do everything we can to counteract the force of those feedback loops that keep groups underrepresented.

We all naturally have tunnel vision, and apply our experience to everyone else. I can't speak for you, but many people who don't face discrimination naturally don't encounter the obstacles and don't feel negatively toward minorities; they assume that therefore such things don't exist.

But something is missing from our perception, because the evidence is overwhelming. Just consider that a black-skinned person in the U.S., for example, would be insane to assume they face no racism and no risks from it. A woman in IT would be willfully ignorant to think there is no sexism and she faces no threat from it.

* The historical record is overwhelming, and does not need to be recounted.

* Consider that white-skinned males make up ~33% of the U.S. population, yet look at their overwhelming prevalence in tech, business leadership, government, entertainment, and elsewhere - far more than a 1/3 of the people you see are white guys. Probably not coincidentally, it's the group that benefited most from prior centuries of discrimination. If it was a meritocracy, what is the statistical chance that Silicon Valley or the U.S. Senate would turn out to be so overwhelmingly white male? I doubt you believe that their skin color and gender make them superior (and if someone does, then we don't have to argue about where the barriers are); so how else do we explain their overwhelming proportion of success, and the lack of success for so many minorities?

* Surveys show that large numbers have prejudicial views of people of other races, religions, nationalities, etc. Look at the widespread support in Western countries for openly discriminatory leaders, openly discriminatory policies, and similar behavior by many citizens. This includes discrimination by religion (e.g., Muslims), race (e.g., blacks), nationality (immigrants), etc. Many people, even some on HN, claim it's ok to discriminate (to be clear, I don't mean the parent comment), but in the next breath argue that discrimination doesn't exist.

There's a lot of literature that answers your question, explaining what those barriers are and what they look like from other people's perspectives.

You know what I love about free software? It's ultimately judged on merits.

I use software everyday written by all kinds of people, many of whom I would otherwise have little in common with. I don't care about their personal lives, political opinions, or baggage. I care about what they've produced and vice versa. It's the ultimate level playing field.

Please keep the social justice fighting out of free software or you'll kill the openness that has built a worldwide ecosystem.

> Please keep the social justice fighting out of free software

What are you talking about? The FSF birthed this movement, and was functionally based on social justice issues. If you pay any heed at all to the 'four freedoms', that's definitively 'social justice fighting'.

If you like things judged on their merits, no doubt you are a strong, vocal opponent of any discrimination based on race, nationality, gender, sexuality, or anything else not related to merit.

What leads me to believe culture has more of an affect nowadays than race is the fact that Asians have higher average incomes than whites, even though they were also historically subjected to racism.

Just because culture and income have some effect doesn't mean that skin color doesn't have a large effect. We can ask 'what if' forever, bringing up endless objections, but it's just a form of propaganda (intentionally or not) and doesn't change the obvious facts.

You are opposing "race" and "culture" when race is in large part a cultural construct.

The question I ask is: Why struggle? What is the motivation for denying these groups justice?

But to clarify one important point: Most discrimination is ignorance, IMHO, not intentional. People don't see their own cultural bias - e.g., instinctively trusting the person more like what they are already familiar with (which becomes self-fulfilling) - or overlook their advantages, such as the fact that the culture of their college and workplace are so natural to them that they don't even notice that there is a culture, but that it's alien and exclusive for others. They don't imagine what it's like to be the only woman or dark-skinned person in the room, all day every day, for the rest of their lives; never sure if it's going to cost you a promotion, a job, a client, etc.

That was not my intent, as I certainly don't beleive that. Rather, I wanted to disambiguate the GP question (which could be taken either way).

Perhaps I should have shortened my request for clarification to "which culture and what effect are you asking about?"

Anyway, over/under representation happens through many avenues, some through overt and intentional discrimination, and much more through secondary and tertiary effects, many of which reinforce each other through positive feedback loops (not to mention reinforcing the overt and intentional sort as well).

eg. once you control for sibling order, parents' educational background and income, etc., it is clear that on average girls get their first computer at a later age than boys by several years. If a computer is supposed to be shared between siblings and it isn't in a common area it will tend to go into the boy's room. and so on.

Parents aren't deliberately reinforcing gender stereotypes to reduce their daughters' opportunities to discourage them from using computers, but that's exactly what is happening, and this is entirely a cultural phenomenon.

You can in many other cases measure a discouraging effect from within the culture of an underrepresented group, but just because it is worth noting however and whenever a group is complicit in their underrepresentation, it does not magically shift responsibility away from members of an over-represented group to accept changes to their culture to stop discouraging and excluding others, most specifically in this case any beleifs that participation in Free Software is entirely based on merit.

I find it baffling that this sentence could have been written in earnest at the present historical moment.