[ Thanks to James Maguire for this
link. ]
“Asked to guess what percentage of FOSS developers are women,
mostly people guess a number between 30-45%. A few, either more
observant or anticipating a trick question after hearing the
proprietary figure, guess 12-16%. The exact figure, though, is even
lower: 1.5%.“In other words, women’s participation in FOSS development is
over seventeen times lower than it is in proprietary software
development. Proprietary software is inferior in so many ways to
FOSS that the fact that it is more successful in recruiting women
highlights, more than anything else, that FOSS has a problem —
even if you allow for the widest possible margins of error. The
figures are a galling reversal of what those of us in the FOSS
community prefer to believe. We’re the idealistic and progressive
ones, we like to believe.”