Open-source software (OSS) is now ubiquitous and indispensable, supporting applications in virtually every domain. Therefore, sustaining this digital infrastructure is of utmost societal importance. One of the significant challenges in OSS sustainability is its low gender diversity. It is a well-known fact that the open-source software community is heavily skewed towards men. A low gender diversity environment is non-inclusive to non-male people. Women are one of the under-represented groups, taking up at most 10% of the OSS population. Several studies have demonstrated that women face more discrimination; for example, in some ecosystems, women have lower code acceptance rates, longer code review delays, and doubts about their skills and abilities. The low diversity and non-inclusive culture can lead to three major challenges. First, it limits the contributor pool, which harms OSS sustainability because OSS projects need a constant supply of effort for development and maintenance. Second, it impedes project success because evidence shows that a higher gender diverse team is more productive and performs better. Third, it affects gender representation and equity, thus preventing all contributors from enjoying the benefits of OSS, such as finding a job.

With much evidence showing the presence of gender discrimination, this dissertation studies why this happens and what might be an effective intervention. The first three studies in this dissertation are mixed-methods empirical studies that aim to explain the low representation of women among other marginalized groups. Because OSS development is a socio-technical activity, I use theories from social sciences and humanities, such as sociology, economics, and linguistics, to derive hypotheses and explain and contextualize results. The first three studies are arranged by the phases of an OSS contributor, with one chapter on each of the phases: newcomer, contributor and long-term contributor, and disengaged.

To conclude the dissertation, I take one step further to develop an intervention to improve the overall diversity and inclusion in OSS. As the curb-cutting phenomenon describes, designs that cater to marginalized groups also benefit a wider range of people. I use insights from the first three studies to inform the design of a dashboard for maintainers to monitor the health of their project community. I tested the dashboard through two rounds of think-aloud studies and one round of longer-term diary studies with OSS maintainers for usability and effectiveness. Overall, maintainers are excited about our dashboard's information and agree that our health indicators are informative and helpful.

171 pages

Thesis Committee:
Bogdan Vasilescu (Chair)
Laura Dabbish
James Herbsleb
Emerson Murphy-Hill (Google Research)

James D. Herbsleb, Head, Institute for Software Research
Martial Hebert, Dean, School of Computer Science

Return to: SCS Technical Report Collection
School of Computer Science

This page maintained by reports@cs.cmu.edu