Outreachy (previously the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program for Women) is a program that organizes three-month paid internships with free and open-source software projects for people who are typically underrepresented in those projects. The program is organized by the Software Freedom Conservancy and was formerly organized by The GNOME Project and the GNOME Foundation.
It is open to cisgender and transgender women, people of other gender identities that are minorities in open source (including transgender men and genderqueer people), and people of any gender in the United States who have racial/ethnic identities underrepresented in the US technology industry (Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander). Participants can be of any background and any age older than 18. Internships can focus on programming, design, documentation, marketing, or other kinds of contributions.
The program began in 2006 with a round of internships for women working on the GNOME desktop environment (which primarily runs on Linux), and it resumed in 2010 with internships twice a year, adding projects from other organizations starting in 2012. As of 2014, these rounds of internships have had up to 16 participating organizations, including Mozilla and the Wikimedia Foundation. Funding comes from the GNOME Foundation, Google, organizations participating in the internships, and other software companies.
Program details
The goal of Outreachy is to "create a positive feedback loop" that supports more women participating in free and open-source software, since contributors to free and open-source projects have mostly been men (see also Women in Libre software communities). The program is similar to Google Summer of Code, also an internship in free and open-source software, but unlike Google Summer of Code it is not limited to students or developers. It is intended to be compatible with student schedules, with mid-year internships corresponding with the summer break of students in the northern hemisphere, and late-year internships corresponding with the summer break of students in the southern hemisphere.
The program began with inviting women participants, and it grew to include "anyone who was assigned female at birth and anyone who identifies as a woman, genderqueer, genderfluid, or genderfree regardless of gender presentation or assigned sex at birth". The December 2014 round was also open to participants of the Ascend Project of any gender, a training program for people from other groups underrepresented in open source. Starting in September 2015, Outreachy became open to "residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander", as people underrepresented in the technology industry in the US.
As part of the application process, applicants have to make a contribution to the project they want to work with. Participants work remotely, so the internship includes a $500 travel budget to support interns meeting fellow contributors in person and develop stronger connections to the project. Participants also write a blog about their work, which one said "allowed me to meet many people interested in the same topic as myself and opened a completely different range of opportunities."
Impact
The GNOME Project has noted several signs that the program has improved its recruitment and retention of women contributors. In April 2011, it said its 3.0 release "included more contributions by women than any previous release, an increase the project attributes [to] its new internship program." In November 2011, it said the program had also helped recruit seven women to its Google Summer of Code program that year, in comparison to one or zero women in previous years. At the project's annual conference, GUADEC, 17% of attendees (41) in 2012 were women, "compared to only 4% (6 women) among attendees affiliated with GNOME three years earlier at the Desktop Summit 2009." In June 2013, program co-organizer Marina Zhurakhinskaya said half of the 41 participants had continued to contribute to GNOME after their internships, including five becoming mentors for the program.
Wikimedia said that working with the Outreach Program for Women and Google Summer of Code caused the project to develop better resources for newcomers interested in contributing to Wikimedia in general, including documentation and lists of suitable projects for newcomers.