On Mon, Jun 24, 2019 at 2:19 PM Sage Sharp <[email protected]> wrote: > > The current ASF policy is already picking winners. It biases toward > contributions from the people who can afford to volunteer their time for > free software development.
While this may indeed be true, those are not the winners we're talking about. We're talking about perception that we are going to start picking *communities* as winners. Consider this: I see that Outreachy has done a lot of work with Linux Foundation communities, yet I can bet $5 every single time the money actually flowed from individual LF collaborative project's board of directors, not LF (umbrella) itself. This will be like Apache Groovy PMC funding their own development. Nothing wrong with that, it is just that they have to do it completely outside of ASF framework. In fact, they have done exactly that: https://opencollective.com/friends-of-groovy btw. > From a community volunteer's standpoint, the community seems "neutral". > People succeed in making contributions to the community in their spare > time. Some contributors find jobs with people who use the community's > software. Everything seems to work. Except that it doesn't for people who > are from marginalized groups in tech. > > A community will build its development workflow, communications channels, > and leadership pathways for the people who are already in the community. If > the community isn't diverse, they won't see the barriers that people from > marginalized groups face. The barriers are invisible to them. If the ASF > participates in Outreachy, you will discover what some of those barriers > are. > > One barrier to participation that has already been identified by other free > software communities is that requiring unpaid volunteer work is a burden to > people from marginalized groups in tech. There is a specific set of people > who can afford to volunteer their time for free software communities. This > article breaks down some of the reasons why people from marginalized groups > may not have the resources to volunteer their time: > > https://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-and-the-oss-community#diversity > > Potential employers often look at the job candidates' GitHub repositories > to determine their software skills. That means the people who can afford to > contribute unpaid labor are more likely to get a job in tech. Not paying > people for free software development means people from marginalized groups > in tech are less likely to have a software portfolio when looking for a job. > > Addressing inequality means that communities need to commit to making > change. That means volunteer time, community effort towards changes, and > yes, monetary resources. As I said on another thread: To do nothing is to > accept the status quo. All great points, but it still doesn't help addressing structural framework we're grappling with. Thanks, Roman.
