URM = "Under-represented minority"

Cool, thanks.

I don't work in programming but know quite a few people through their contributions to OSS/software, but many of them I don't even know what sex they are, nevermind what characteristics they hold that are minority in their locality??

It seems really unlikely that any personal characteristic beyond your programming ability (and not even that necessarily, UX/support/bug reporting/etc.) could inhibit you from contributing to OSS?

I mean so people look at pull requests and say "does this smell like curry to you?".

Is it a genuine issue?

This whole movement for having CoC in open source projects came about as a side-effect of the use of CoC for physical conferences, meetups, workshops etc. etc.; stuff where "is X being unprofessional to the point of outright aggressing on others, or making them feel unsafe to be here" can be critically important, and even the level of "diversity" at an event can be easily assessed and alter perceptions of 'belonging', ease-of-cooperation and the like in rather clear ways. The people involved simply thought of CoC as "good", and just weren't thinking about "hey, does this stuff really apply to computer-mediated collaboration? Is this even relevant?" It simply wasn't on their radar.

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, some things might not translate to digital communication, but many do.

Yes, it happens quite a bit, at least if people dare to use their actual identities for their contributions instead of hiding behind something neutral.

I agree that people should be able to use their actual identities and receive the same treatment, but it's worth noting that in the programming world most people create accounts that either simply don't show their identities or obscure them. That does seem to be changing rapidly, though, and I wonder why.

I mean, right now in this very thread the 3 commenters are "0815test", "detaro" and "pbhjpbhj". For most people I've worked with on OSS, I couldn't tell any personal details if I tried.

(I do think this varies by community: in the Javascript world I usually see Github profiles with real names, a photo, location, and a bio... for C, you'll see mostly default photos, non-identifying usernames and no-nonsense bios)

>in the Javascript world I usually see Github profiles with real names, a photo, location, and a bio... //

But do you bother to do a join to see if the people are URM in their locality? Like you need to know if someone is in Nigeria, Nepal, Nebraska, or Nagasaki before you can say they're an URM? OR are we supposed to only care if someone is an URM in a particular area of USA -- which would be superironic.

It seems so antithetical to the concept of contributing to OSS, any insights in to the people who are being prejudiced about people's code contributions?