Over the next few weeks the Apache Community Development team will be sending out and running its first ever Apache Software Foundation Committer Diversity Survey. The committer group was selected because they are a significant number of people that are linked to every Apache project.  (NOTE: The ASF currently has 5861 committers across 295 projects.)

Although there are many aspects to diversity including socio-economic, disability and education etc which may be addressed in future surveys, this initial survey will focus on the three broad areas of age, gender and ethnicity. It will also try to capture information about why people contribute to Apache projects. To ensure the confidentiality and privacy of the respondents, the survey will be anonymous and completely voluntary.

Why capture this information?
Many organisations are wanting to find out how effective they are at attracting a diverse range of people. The Apache Software Foundation promotes open, community focussed projects that are welcoming to all, yet have not collected any information to support this. This survey will be an opportunity to capture this information.

The survey results will be used to generate consolidated and aggregated statistics for the Apache Community Development team and the Apache Software Foundation. These details may be published and made publicly available.

When will the survey results be published?
The survey will be run over a two week period and once complete an additional week will be required to consolidate the responses into statistics. Survey results will be announced on the committers and community development mailing lists.