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.

Updates - 2023

See followup surveys conducted in later years.

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?
• Why was the response rate low? What can be done to understand or explain the response rate? It could be a variety or things e.g. non active committers, not engaging enough with committer base, general lack of interest, people too busy, etc.

Proposed Actions

• Find out how significant this result is. Start discussion about what analysis can be done to give us this information?
• Find out how many non active committers we have (some flagged as emeritus etc) / do we have a non-active flag or can do something to work out if someone is active or not

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

Proposed actions

Confirm what we are currently doing

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
• This is clearly significantly different to the responses for question 1. Instead of being fairly balanced across the time frame, there is a large group of newer committers. This seems to indicate that some of the committers have been involved with a project for more than 3 years before being invited as a committer.

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

Comments

• The objective of this question was to find out in general how and why people are contributing to Apache projects
• Fourteen people preferred not to answer this question
• The largest group of respondents (378) contribute to Apache projects as an Employee, so as part of their employment
• The second largest group of respondents (302) contribute to Apache individually outside their regular employment. This means that they are volunteering their free time to contribute.

Question 4: How would you like to record your gender for the purposes of this survey?

Comments

• The objective of this question was to get a picture of the gender breakdown / diversity of the Apache committers
• Ten people preferred not to answer this question
• The two not listed responses did not specify a gender and instead commented on the question
• The largest group of respondents (703) were male
• Forty females, four trans females, and six gender variant / non conforming / non-binary responded.
  
  • Only 5.2% of respondents were female which is low
  • It is good to see that the people of non conforming gender are involved in ASF projects and also that they are willing to indicate this for the survey
  • Is there any potential work that can be done to see if we can get more information on a larger scale?

Proposed actions

• Compare our data with other similar open source foundations / organisations to see where we are (are we typical / atypical / top / bottom / middle etc?)
• Engage with women and other under-represented groups within the ASF and find out any ideas for encouraging others
• Review existing outreach programs to see if they can help reach these under represented groups
• Look at additional / specific outreach (e.g. Outreachy, Hackbright, WiBD etc) to see if we can collaborate with them

Question 5: What is your age range?

Comments

• The objective of this question was to find out the age range of Apache committers and to see if this was balanced
• Nine people preferred not to answer this question
• The largest group of respondents (292) came from 35 to 44 age range
• The second largest group of respondents (268) came from the 25 to 34 age range
• It is also interesting to see that the ASF is also attracting people in the under 24 and over 65 age ranges

Question 6: Which of the following would you use to describe yourself?

Comments

• The objective of this question was to get a picture of the high level ethnic diversity of the Apache committers
• Thirty people preferred not to answer this question
• The largest group of respondents (513) were Caucasian / White
• The second largest group of respondents (176) were Asian

Question 7: How often to you refer to ASF policies, processes or guidelines?

Comments

• The objective of this question was to find out if the documentation around policies and guidelines were being refered to by committers
• Ten people preferred not to answer this question
• The largest group of respondents (415) said that they rarely referred to ASF processes, policies or guidelines

Question 8: When you need to locate information about ASF processes, policies or guidelines, which of the following describes your experience?

Uncategorised included some comments on the following themes

• General use of Google to search
• Get help from other community members to find details
• No standard search engine for ASF documents (e.g Google search on 'Apache' returns 'httpd' related items)

Comments

• The objective of this question was to find out how easy it was to locate information about policies, processes or guidelines
• Fifty-three people preferred not to answer this question
• The largest group of respondents (455) said that sometimes information was a little difficult to find

Question 9: Please use the box below to provide any additional comments or feedback about this survey, diversity at the ASF or the ASF in general

NOTE: This question included a special note requesting permission to quote from any comments made.

Comments

• The objective of this question was to get feedback from the committers on diversity ideas, ASF policies or processes, and the ASF in general
• Four hundred and forty six people  (446) responded to this question and 111 comments were made
• Eighty one (81) people gave permission for their comments to be shared or quoted
• One person did not respond 'Yes' or 'No' in giving their permission so as a default this will be treated as no permission has been given
• The comments have been categorised into various themes