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.