The state of open source in the Global South

The Eclipse Foundation recently conducted a report on open source in the Global South, the region of the world which the United Nations defines as “the developing and emerging industrial economies across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Oceania.”

To learn about the findings of the report and what they mean, we spoke with Thabang Mashologu, VP of community at the Eclipse Foundation, on the most recent episode of our podcast, What the Dev?

Here is an edited and abridged version of that conversation: 

How did this survey come about? What made you want to study the impact of open source in these areas?

First of all, since it’s the global majority and that’s where the population growth is coming from, we consider that as a real key part of the sustainability of the open source ecosystem. And frankly, we hear a lot from developers in the Global North, and we just haven’t seen a lot in the way of data and actual insights on the perspectives and challenges of developers in the Global South. 

The sustainability of open source really hinges on having a strong pipeline of contributors and maintainers, so we’ve been asking ourselves at the Eclipse Foundation a number of really big questions, namely, where are the next generation of developers? Who are they? What’s their relationship with open source, and what challenges are they facing? 

And we started by looking at our own contributors and committers and research, including GitHub’s Octoverse report, and we noticed something that was interesting. The fastest growing developer communities are almost exclusively in the Global South, but what struck us more was that there wasn’t much research coming from these areas, and that’s why we decided to dive deeper. We wanted to understand the work they were doing, their perspectives, and also we had a hunch that the impact of open source was being felt far beyond just software development and also having broader socioeconomic effects.

Getting into the findings, 77% of respondents said they used open source software, 37% contribute to open source projects, 27% maintain them, and 22% create new projects. What has been the positive impact that these open source developers have been seeing?

The positive impact of these developers is something that we were positively surprised by. Three things in particular stood out for us in terms of that impact and the potential of these developers. 

First of all, they’re not just users of open source. They’re actively shaping its future. The fact that 28% are maintainers, and a quarter of them are creating new projects, it really means that they’re increasingly driving the agenda for these technologies that the rest of the world relies on. I think by now, pretty much everyone in the tech industry accepts that diversity is a good thing. I hope these developers are bringing their fresh perspectives and approaches and contributions to the communities that they’re part of. 

The second really big idea that we uncovered in terms of the positive impacts is that these developers are leveraging open source for career growth, very much like the rest of the world, and they’re using open source to acquire new skills, to learn new technologies and techniques and approaches to problem solving, and they’re also seeing that translate into better paying jobs and really seeing the financial benefits related to that. 

The third thing is that they’re also leveraging their involvement in open source to drive positive change more broadly in their communities. They identified three areas where they see that impact happening most greatly, and that’s improved educational opportunities for young people, for women, for other underrepresented groups in tech; the development of a stronger workforce overall in terms of software developers and those technology related functional areas; and  increased entrepreneurship, so business creation and economic contributions related to that innovation that’s based in software.

What are the ways in which they’re leveraging open source to advance their careers? And does it differ from how, for instance, developers in the US use open source to do that?

What we observed in our research is that there’s this democratizing effect that you see with open source because it’s permissionless. There’s no gatekeepers between someone in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a project that they want to use. It’s really removing and lowering barriers to access, and that’s huge.

Another thing is the fact that they’re able to leverage open source to build their skills, to advance their learning in a way that doesn’t require them to go to college or to university. That’s also really powerful, and it also extends to women. 

That’s something that we heard consistently, is that there are many countries in which women don’t have the same access to educational opportunities as they do in the in the West, and open source offers a very convenient and easily accessible way for those folks to get the skills they need to improve their lives, and then it also helps them collaborate with people from around the world. So you see this effect where technology, and particularly open source technology, really enables the borders of the world to come down, and people are able to relate to each other as community members.

You touched on the gender inequality part of this, the fact that women are able to kind of advance their careers better using open source, and the report pointed out that it’s also positive because open source solutions are being created that can impact gender specific issues, like apps for women’s specific healthcare issues or apps that provide like more educational resources. Can you share a little bit more about how open source is having that positive impact there, and also how policymakers can continue supporting women in open source in those countries?

I think one of the things that we did early on as we were developing the survey questionnaire is we talked to a number of experts, not only technology experts, but policymakers and folks who work at the UN, to get a better understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, that factor into a lot of these larger questions around policy. They gave us some very helpful and concrete examples that we were able to test out in our quantitative research. 

Specifically, they said two things. They said that women are able to find mentors and role models and allies in these global open source communities. Again, this idea of being able to break through and go beyond the borders of their countries and those regions, and that’s the kind of thing that helps them build confidence. It reduces the sense of isolation and creates those new career opportunities through networking, especially in areas and countries where women are underrepresented in tech.

The second big idea was that women can contribute to open source projects that address the issues they care about. Now you mentioned healthcare and other applications that could be particularly targeted towards females and women. The idea that they can use their creativity, ingenuity, and passion to build solutions that work for everyone, not just a limited or small group of people, is really quite powerful, and that level of advocacy, and let’s say, focused enablement and participation, is the kind of thing that that really helps drive gender equality. 

We also heard a lot about how open source was empowering women and girls by offering them opportunities to better learn and contribute and lead in the tech industry. 

I’ll just share a bit of a small anecdote. At the Eclipse Foundation, we’ve actually partnered with the Girls Coding Academy in Lesotho — that’s the country that I’m from in southern Africa — and we’re working on an initiative with them to teach coding skills to about 200 teachers and girls in in that country using the Eclipse IDE. Now that’s just a small example. And we’re looking to do more along those lines, but hopefully that illustrates the fact that there’s a real connection between what is software and then how that software impacts people in their real day-to-day lives, and gives them opportunity and breaks down barriers that might otherwise exist.

Moving beyond the positive social impact. Another element of this report was that a majority think that open source is going to influence their country’s economic growth. Do you have any insights into why that is?

I think open source can help these countries drive economic growth in a few really important ways. One that we’ve already touched on is skill development and training. I think that’s a real way to help equalize and bridge the digital divide that exists between the Global South and North. The fact is that with open source, someone sitting in Palo Alto, California now has the same access to technology as someone sitting in Johannesburg, South Africa, or Lagos, Nigeria. And that’s a really an important shift in the world, frankly, and it allows for folks to unlock the often underused potential of a huge swath of the world. As we were talking about, this is the global majority, so now getting those people into the spheres of technology development and innovation is something that’s going to be beneficial, not only to these countries, but to the rest of the world. 

The other big impact is the fact open source enables startups and businesses to leverage technology to create opportunity. What we found is that developers in the Global South are having significant impact across a variety of industries, in existing businesses, in financial services, telecom, and healthcare, and increasingly, they’re creating new ventures. 

Over the last several years, we’ve seen startups be funded in Latin America and in Africa and in Asia from the Global North. We’re seeing these new ventures attract startup capital and interest and really advance the global technology scene from these countries.  So it’s not just a matter of outsourcing anymore and using these talented folks as a source of cheap labor, you’re actually seeing the developers and engineers from these regions make a mark on the international economy.

I know we’ve covered a lot of the highlights of the report, but were there any other takeaways from the report that developers might find interesting that we didn’t touch on?

I think maybe what I’d like to underline is that often, when we think of the Global South, you know, we think, how do we help these people? How do we assist them? And maybe the biggest takeaway for me was that this research shifts the narrative, where it’s not about what the rest of the world can do for the Global South, but particularly around the sustainability of open source, where you’re seeing a lot of the folks that created and maintained for many years these core technologies and infrastructure, you’re seeing those folks age out. So I think the narrative and discussion has shifted to now, how can the Global South help open source and help the tech industry? 

I think the fact is that with the leveling of the playing field that open source provides, and the fact that you’re seeing a lot of creative solutions and technologies come out of these countries, I would encourage developers in the Global North to look to their peers in the South as potential contributors, maintainers and leaders, and they should welcome and encourage and mentor them and ensure that they feel welcomed. That kind of engagement can help distribute the workload and reduce the burnout among maintainers today, and also inject new innovations into the global ecosystem.

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