Gendered work culture in free/libre open source software development

This article adopts a feminist perspective to examine masculine work culture in the development of free/libre open source software. The authors draw on a case study of the ‘Heidi bug’ discovered during the development of the Mozilla Firefox web browser to examine how ‘gendered talk’ was (en)‐acted t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Gender, work, and organization work, and organization, 2019-07, Vol.26 (7), p.1017-1031
Main Authors: Lin, Yu‐Wei, Besten, Matthijs
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ability
Bricolage
Case studies
Consciousness
Corporate culture
Cultural change
Ethics
Feminism
free/libre open source software
Freeware
Gender
gendered talks
Hegemony
heterohegemonic masculinity
Heterosexuality
humour
Ignorance
Internet
Language usage
Masculinity
Moral education
online virtual work space
open innovation
Open source software
Organizational culture
Property
Public domain
Software
Software development
Women
work cultures
Work environment
Workplaces
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Summary:This article adopts a feminist perspective to examine masculine work culture in the development of free/libre open source software. The authors draw on a case study of the ‘Heidi bug’ discovered during the development of the Mozilla Firefox web browser to examine how ‘gendered talk’ was (en)‐acted to facilitate ‘bricolage’ in an online work environment. Such gendered talks contain cultural references familiar to male developers. Though seemingly innocuous, such acts could be seen as a performance of gender that simply reflects the hegemonic heterosexual masculine culture manifested in an online virtual work space. The virtual work space therefore can be exclusive to those who shared the cultural references. Although it may not necessarily be ignorance or insensitivity of male developers, a more gender‐balanced, women‐friendly and inclusive workplace certainly would benefit from a more diverse environment. This article highlights the gendered aspect of software development through examining the language use and mainstream ‘bricolage’ practice, and establishes a compelling ground for enlarging the talent pool to include more women and integrating gender ethics (e.g., raising awareness of sensitive language and design approaches) into computer ethics education.
ISSN:0968-6673
1468-0432
DOI:10.1111/gwao.12255