At this year’s Opensource.com Community Moderator’s meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst made a comment that stuck with me.
“Open source’s supply chain is source code,” he said, “and the people making up that supply chain aren’t very diverse.”
Diversity and inclusivity in the technology industry—and in open source communities more specifically—have received a lot of coverage, both on Opensource.com and elsewhere. One approach to the issue foregrounds arguments about concepts that are more abstract—like human decency, for example.
But the “supply chain” metaphor works, too. And it can be an effective argument for championing greater inclusivity in our open organizations, especially when people dismiss arguments based on appeals to abstract concepts. Open organizations require inclusivity, which is a necessary input to get the diversity that reduces the risk in our supply chain.
Read more at OpenSource.com
