Last year, the Free Software Foundation held a mini-summit for women in free software to learn how to attract more ladies to the open source community.
The Women’s Caucus was formed, and today the group released its initial recommendations and findings.
Women in free software are relatively invisible, Caucus Member Deborah Nicholson said in the announcement. “This skews women’s perception of the free software community and impacts retention.”
Besides the “boys club” mentality, the group also recommends exposing more young women to open source software.
“Middle school and high school,” Nicholson said, “are when girls potentially have the time and interest to tinker and try new things, but all too often access to public computers means running proprietary software.”
The Caucus is said to be creating an internship to help with this outreach and diversity program.
