The Outreach Program Still Aiming For Other Underrepresented Backgrounds

Jean-François Fortin Tam has written a blog post about the GNOME Outreach program and how their cash flow problem last year came down to a business accounting mistake and how they're still looking to expand this program for getting women and other under-represented groups involved with free software.

Last year the GNOME Foundation was running short on money while managing their Outreach Program for Women. Jean-François in a new blog post entitled Outrageous Outreach described the problem as, "The situation arose because companies paid in variable rates and our accounting did not account for it. After all companies paid their share, the foundation became solvent. This is purely a business accounting issue arising from dealing with rapid growth because the outreach program was so successful."

While that's old news, he also mentioned that the Outreach program is intent on expanding:

It is planned to also expand the program to participants coming from other underrepresented backgrounds, not just based on gender. The whole point of an outreach program is to help restore a balance to this messed up I.T. industry of ours.

This outreach program that we helped grow has also had positive effects in other high profile projects such as the Linux kernel, where the FOSS Outreach Program for Women ranked #13 [as a sponsoring organization] for contributions to the Linux kernel during the 3.11 cycle, with those interns contributing 1.5 percent of the patches. If it works well even in the reputedly hardcore Linux kernel project, you gotta admit it’s a positive trend.

The GNOME OPW program was renamed to Outreachy earlier this year. Over the summer there's been 30 projects for encouraging women to get into free software.

Those interested in learning more can visit the GNOME.org Outreachy site.