• OutreachySponsor

Info for Sponsors

What is the FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW)?

According to a 2002 survey of open source communities, only 1.1% of participatants are women. In order to increase diversity in open source, the GNOME Foundation created the FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW). The program provides a three-month paid internship, where participants are paired with mentors from one of 19 different open source projects. The Linux kernel is one of those projects.

The GNOME Foundation coordinates the overall program and pays the interns. [https://wiki.gnome.org/KarenSandler Karen Sandler] and [https://wiki.gnome.org/MarinaZhurakhinskaya Marina Zhurakhinskaya] coordinate the overall OPW program. Each separate open source project has a coordinator that communicates with project applicants, interns, and mentors. [wiki:SarahSharp Sarah Sharp] is the coordinator for the Linux Kernel project in OPW.

How can I help?

There are several different ways companies can support OPW. Companies can choose any or all of these options.

1. Donate money to fund OPW interns. The sponsorship per intern includes $5,000 (USD) stipend, $500 travel allowance, and a small administrative fee for the GNOME Foundation. The donation levels are:

• Ceiling Smasher - $47,000 - 8 interns
• Equalizer - $29,000 - 5 interns
• Promoter - $17,250 - 3 interns
• Includer - $5,750 - 1 intern

  If you are interested in donating, please contact MailTo(karen AT gnome DOT org, Karen Sandler) and MailTo(sarah.a.sharp AT intel DOT com, Sarah Sharp).

2. Donate employees' time to help out during the application process. During the month-long application process, applicants work through a first-patch tutorial, and submit a patch to the Linux kernel. People who wish to help out with the application process can review patches, and answer questions about kernel development and git on the OPW IRC channel. If you're interested in code review during the application process, please contact MailTo(sarah.a.sharp AT intel DOT com, Sarah Sharp).

3. Donate employees' time to be an OPW mentor. Mentors participate in code review during the month-long application process, and mentor interns for three months. Mentors will need to come up with a small project suitable for a new contributor, that can be completed or partially completed within three months, and is not critial-path. Typically, mentors meet with their interns for an hour a week. They may meet more frequently or longer as necessary. Mentors will need to set aside extra time to answer their intern's questions, and review and merge their code. Interns work full-time on their OPW projects, so mentoring an intern is as time-consuming as ramping up and mentoring a new employee. If you're interested in being a Linux kernel mentor, please contact MailTo(sarah.a.sharp AT intel DOT com, Sarah Sharp).

4. Add a new project to OPW. If your open source project isn't listed on the [https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Participating_Organizations OPW project page], you can contact MailTo(karen AT gnome DOT org, Karen Sandler) to discuss adding your project to OPW. This requires the most amount of time out of all these options. Your project will need to provide a tutorial for applicants that to submit a small contribution to your project. This tutorial will need to walk applicants through creating the right build environment, making a change, and contributing that change back to the project. Your project will also need to provide a coordinator to manage deadlines, communicate with mentors, and answer applicants questions. Finally, your project will need to find funding for at least one intern ($5,750), and find one mentor (ideally a different person from the coordinator).

Past Sponsors and Mentors

April 2013 Internship Sponsors

attachment:lf-logo.png

Linux Foundation: 3 interns

attachment:intel-logo.png

Intel: 3 interns

FOSS OPW general fund: 1 intern

April 2013 Mentors

Linux Foundation:

• Greg Kroah-Hartman

Intel:

• PJ Waskiewicz
• Carolyn Wyborny
• Anjali Singhai
• Sarah Sharp

Oracle:

• Konrad Wilk

Citrix:

• Stefano Stabellini

How interns are selected

What are the positive outcomes of OPW?

In April 2013, the Linux kernel joined as an OPW project for the first time. We created a tutorial that walks applicants through creating and submitting their first kernel cleanup patch. This tutorial can be used by anyone (not just OPW applicants) to ramp up on kernel development. This accomplishes our goal of improving our documentation for all newcomers to the Linux kernel.

The Linux kernel project proved to be the most popular project within OPW. We had over 41 women apply, proving that women are interested in Linux kernel development. Of the 41 women who applied, 11 of them were successful in getting a patch merged into the Linux kernel. Due to a shortage of funding, we were only able to accept 7 of those women as OPW interns.

The Linux Weekly News (LWN) site tracks statistics about Linux kernel development. Each kernel release, they crunch numbers and reveal which developers and employers are the most active in modifying the Linux kernel. The number of OPW patches merged during the application process earned the program the #13 employer spot in the [http://lwn.net/Articles/563977/ 3.11 kernel statistics], beating Google, Oracle, and ARM:

One of our OPW interns, Xenia Ragiadakou, made the #10 contributor by getting 100 patches merged into 3.11.

After being accepted into the program, OPW interns worked on real-world kernel projects, ranging from parallelizing the x86 boot process to updating TTY drivers that were created in 2005 and getting them merged into the staging tree. During the internship period, interns worked remotely, communicating with mentors via email, IRC, phone conversations, and Google hangout. Interns had to manage their own time efficiently and learn how to seek help from their mentors and the community when they got stuck. These skills will prove invaliable as interns move into jobs working with the global Linux kernel community.