Diversity and decorum in open source communities

Open source software communities are increasingly aware of how social biases and discrimination negatively affect their culture. Many choose to establish policies regulating their contributors' social interactions without considering the efficacy of such measures. If these communities lack an empirical awareness of their policies' impact, they may find themselves adopting dogmatic practices that serve only to increase overhead maintenance costs. Conducting a gender diversity analysis of popular open source projects, I discovered no significant change in the proportion of women contributing to projects with or without a code of conduct. In light of this discovery, the open source community should consider supplemental strategies in order to foster diverse participation in their projects.