Episode 11: Diversity in Open Source with Laura Gaetano

In this week’s episode of Sustain Our Software the panel
interviews Laura Gaetano. Laura is a developer and designer,
whose main job was running was running Rails Girls Summer of
Code. The panel considers how great Rails Girls is and all that
they are doing. The panel also expresses their love for the Rails
framework. 


Laura explains the difference between Rails Girls and Rails Girls
Summer of Code. The panel asks about the challenges that the
Rails Girls Summer of code experience. Laura tells the panel how
open source and the Ruby community has changed since they
started. When they first started Rails Girls Summer of Code there
was a lot less support for open source and diversity in
programming. Now their main challenges are lack of resources,
such as money and people who are invested in Rails Girls Summer
of Code for the long term. 


Other challenges in the organization stem from the nature of the
organization. They are just trying to get everything done, that
things like documentation and long term management solutions get
forgotten. They want to get all their experience for the last six
years documented so that knowledge can help in the future of
Rails Girls Summer of Code. 


The panel considers what a great feeling it is when people use or
contribute to their open source and ask Laura what it’s like to
actually help someone become a developer through her open source
efforts. Laura explains how amazing it is to see women from past
Rails Girls Summer of Code and their success. Laura shares her
love of open source and the collaboration that happens in the
community. Doing Rails Girls Summer of Code she gets a lot more
human contact than in typical open source projects, she explains
how that has made a difference in the way that she sees open
source. 


The panel asks Laura about the state of diversity in open source.
Laura explains that there are initiatives out there to support
diversity in opensource. She invites everyone to visit
opensourcediversity.org. They provide resources to learn about
diversity. They even have an open forum where people have a safe
space to learn about diversity. She explains that diversity is
now a common talking point at conferences to help improve
diversity by educating developers about it. The panel discusses
making projects more inclusive and explains how Github added s
social impact feature that helps make your project more
inclusive. 


The topic turns to a talk Laura gave in 2017. Her talk explains
that open source needs more than code. She explains that she
would like to see more crowdsourcing of knowledge and design in
open source. Programming is a major part of open source and she
is so impressed the how willing programmers are to volunteer
their time. However, she would love to see that desire from other
people in the technology industry. Open source would be more
maintainable if they had people marketing, networking,
documenting. Having open source maintainers who focus on these
things would help generate more funding and make it more
sustainable. 


The panel considers why there is such an emphasis on the code
contributions, even more so than managing or other roles in open
source. Code is a very visible contribution, easy to hold up and
say look what they did. Other roles aren’t so easy to hold up,
how can someone hold up the hours they spent finding sponsors or
perfecting documentation.


The discussion turns to mental health in open source. Laura talks
about her own state of mind and how hard it can be to get herself
to do anything when she is feeling burnt out. She explains that
she needs to change the way she approaches work.  The panel
discusses ways that we can help those experiencing mental health
problems in open source. They suggest talking to each other more
about their experiences, about what depression, anxiety, and burn
out look like and how they affect different people. The panel
discusses what processes can be put in place to help developers
to avoid burn out. 


The panel wonders if developers are susceptible to mental health
problems. Do the large workloads and high amounts of stress
contribute to these issues. Laura explains that in her opinion,
we as humans tend to think that our experience is unique, so
other industries probably feel the same way. The reality is that
this is a worldwide problem, especially for those that Laura
calls knowledge workers.  


The panel considers other ways we can help open source
maintainers not get burnt out. The power of gratitude is one way
they think might help. Laura thinks that getting a thank you from
supports is very important. She relates how she feels when she
talks with participants of Rails Girls Summer of Code and how it
makes all her hard work worth it.


The panel discusses the power of money in open source, explaining
why they started codefund. They explain the benefits of open
source getting some money for their contributions. They consider
the effect it plays on burn out. While Laura agrees to receive
funds for open source contributions can be helpful, she warns
that it could be a double-edged sword.


She warns that the receiving fund could be adding more stress to
open source because of the responsibility it adds. Laura explains
that she has already started to see entitlement from open source
users, getting upset when the maintainer doesn't fix something
right away. The panel considers how these benefits and costs when
the funding is anonymous compared to when it is a direct
sponsorship.



 
Panelists



Eric Berry




Nate Hopkins


Guest



Laura Gaetano


Sponsors  



DevEd Podcast




The Freelancers Show




My Ruby Story




CacheFly


Links



AlterConf Berlin 2017: Making your voice heard: Open Source
Needs You by Laura Gaetano




Laura Gaetano - Building inclusive Open Source communities |
ReasonConf 2018




https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/




https://railsgirlssummerofcode.org/ 




https://opensourcediversity.org/ 




https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/rails-girls-summer-of-code 




https://github.com/about/diversity 




https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1157379019878232064 




https://m.signalvnoise.com/to-smile-again/ 




https://twitter.com/alicetragedy




https://github.com/alicetragedy




https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/




https://twitter.com/sos_opensource


Picks

Eric Berry:




https://webflow.com/ 




Nate Hopkins:




https://www.metabase.com 




Willow Hybrid Tree 




Laura Gaetano:




Jocelyn K. Glei 




The Bulletin




Design for Real Life


Special Guest: Laura Gaetano.