Codes of Conducts for Open Source Projects - Not Optional

This resource first appeared in issue #77 on 05 Jun 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Diversity, Technical Leadership: Open Source Management

Open Source Communities Need More Safe Spaces and Codes of Conducts. Now. - Jennifer Riggins, The New Stack
Codes of conduct in Open Source Software—for warm and fuzzy feelings or equality in community? - Vandana Singh, Brice Bongiovanni, William Brandon, Software Quality Journal

Riggins walks us through the need for codes of conduct for open source projects, pointing out the rather shocking statistic that women make up less than 3% of open source communities, and that this has been stagnant for two decades. Between higher demands on their time and increased likelihood of be taken less seriously if not outright harassed, they are even less represented in open source than they are in tech generally.

Riggins points to empirical research by Singh et al that includes results such as:

• Some women specifically hide their identities for open-source work
• Women who had a good first open-source experience are much more likely to contribute
• Many women explicitly look for codes of conduct before participating

There are existing codes of conduct like the contributor covenant which can be used directly.

Our own project (and team) do not have such CoCs, but as the team grows and our code grows in visibility we’re clearly going to have to adopt them.