Speakers
Description
The FOSS community does not reflect the people who use technology. Only 2.3% of open-source core developers are women (Of all FOSS contributors, 5.35% are women). In a recent study in FOSS contributors, from the 105,862 developers, 0.20% were perceptible as Black, 4.14% as Hispanic, 84.26% as White. FOSS contributors from countries with lower Human Development have their Pull Requests more often rejected.
We will present the Big Open Source Sibling (BOSS), a mentorship framework to onboard underrepresented groups into FOSS, focusing on both technical aspects and nontechnical aspects. The initiative, finalist on the Gnome Engagement Challenge, arises in a Brazilian context, with the understanding that there is a different context in the southern hemisphere, such as language barrier, and social/economic struggles. We introduce the mentorship program, how we address the confidence gap and impostor syndrome, two oppression collateral effects that could prevent underrepresented groups from contributing to FOSS.
Author(s) Bio
Carla Rocha is a software engineer professor at the University of Brasilia (UnB). She uses FOSS capstone projects, and FOSS contributions in the classroom as a pedagogical instrument and engages undergraduates to contribute to FOSS.
Bruna Moreira ia an software engineer, teacher and chatbot developer in business hours. On leasure hours, she dances, naps in her hammock with her cats and works for open software communities: AcompanhaLegis, Big Open Source Sibling, and PyLadies DF.
