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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.

IMPORTANT NOTE: All responses to this survey were voluntary and anonymous. There was no obligation for any of the ASF committers to respond.

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.

	Total	Percentage
Responded to the Survey	765	13%
Didn't Respond to the Survey	5096	87%
Total Committers	5861	100

Community Development > ASF Committer Diversity Survey - 2016 > ASFCS_Responses.png

Date	Number of Responses
28 Nov 16	434
29 Nov 16	61
30 Nov 16	37
1 Dec 16	17
2 Dec 16	6
3 Dec 16	6
4 Dec 16	2
5 Dec 16	5
6 Dec 16	3
7 Dec 16	5
8 Dec 16	3
9 Dec 16	140
10 Dec 16	22
11 Dec 16	24
Total	765

Community Development > ASF Committer Diversity Survey - 2016 > ASFCS_ResponseFreq.png

Comments

The survey response percentage was 13% (765 out of 5861)
How significant is this as an indication of the total committer population?

Survey Questions

Question 1: How long have you been involved with any Apache project community?

Answer Choices	Percentage	Number of Responses
Less than 3 years	34%	257
3 to 5 years	24%	184
5 to 10 years	25%	193
Over 10 years	17%	131
Prefer not to say	0%	0

Community Development > ASF Committer Diversity Survey - 2016 > ASFCS_Question1.png

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

Question 2: How long have you been a committer on any Apache project?

Answer Choices	Percentage	Number of Responses
Less than 3 years	50.2%	384
3 to 5 years	21.6%	165
5 to 10 years	19.3%	148
Over 10 years	8.8%	67
Prefer not to say	0.1%	1

Community Development > ASF Committer Diversity Survey - 2016 > ASFCS_Question2.png

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

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

Answer Choices	Percentage	Number of Responses
Individual (unemployed)		21
Individual (retired)		10
Individual (outside regular job)		302
Employee		378
Prefer not to say		14
Other		40

Comments