Gendered Patterns of Politeness in Free/Libre Open Source Software Development

Abstract

In this paper, a qualitative case study of women-dominated Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) project is conducted to explore factors which successfully involve and sustain women FLOSS participants by drawing on Brown and Levinson's politeness theory. The culture and norms of FLOSS appear to be formulated by what is privileged/marginalized by men in the context of FLOSS, and such men's valuing is likely to threaten women FLOSS participants' face. Our findings are 1) in the FLOSS context, there are gender-based differences in determining what threatens face on the basis of gendered expectations of what is polite, and 2) women-dominated FLOSS participants are “practically” polite in software development practices. These findings were explored through an in-depth analysis of interaction episodes on the email list, archival public interview data of women FLOSS developers, FLOSS development environment, and instructive materials shared in public. Our paper shows how politeness theory can be extended to the “practice” of coding and non-coding work, and provides FLOSS communities with guidelines for involving and sustaining women participants in FLOSS development.