ASF Committer Diversity Survey - 2016

Introduction

Many organisations are wanting to find out how effective they are at attracting a diverse range of people. The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) promotes open, community focussed projects that are welcoming to all, yet have never collected any information to support this.

The main purpose of this survey was to gather feedback from all existing ASF committers about the current level of diversity. Although there are many aspects to diversity including socio-economic, disability, education etc which may be addressed in a future survey, this initial survey was focussed on three broad areas of age, gender and ethnicity. It also captured information about why people contribute to Apache projects.

Responses and Response Frequency

• The survey was open for a total of 14 days (28th November - 11th December 2016)
• A total of 765 responses were recorded (out of a committer base of 5861 at the time that the survey was carried out)
• The majority of responses were recorded during the first day
• A second peak of responses occurred after a survey reminder was sent out close to the end of the survey period.

Comments

• The survey response percentage was 13% (765 out of 5861)
• How significant is this as an indication of the total committer population?

Survey Questions

Question 1: How long have you been involved with any Apache project community?

Comments:

• The objective of this question was to find out how long the committer had been involved with the ASF and to see if it remained balanced over time (e.g. Are people joining as ASF as contributors but then not staying?)
• All respondents answered this question
• The largest group of respondents (257) had been with the ASF for less than 3 years.
• The second largest group of respondents (193) had been with the ASF 5 to 10 years,
• The third largest group of respondents (184) had been with the ASF 3 to 5 years
• It is good to see that the largest group are 'newcomers' which seems to indicate that the ASF is attracting them

Question 2: How long have you been a committer on any Apache project?

Comments

• The objective of this question was to find out how long the committer had been a committer, and to see if it was inline with the previous question about how long people had been involved with the ASF.
• One person preferred not to respond to this question.
• The largest group of respondents (384) had been a committer for less than 3 years

Question 3: In general, do you contribute to Apache as an individual or as an employee of a company?

Comments