While there is a stronger push for gender diversity on tech office premises, India’s next generation of women open source contributors are beginning to make a mark globally. This small, but fast-growing set of women coders from India are shaping the future of several open source platforms globally including the Linux kernel, the core software programme behind the world’s biggest eponymous open source software.
Linux, the most popular and mainstream platform in the free and open source software, popularly referred to as FOSS world, powers Google servers to NASA’s rockets, and competes with Microsoft’s Windows, which is a proprietary product. In India, systems powering the Bombay Stock Exchange and platforms such as the Credit Information Bureau India Ltd., better known as CIBIL, are built and run on Linux. ‘Outreachy,’ a not-for-profit global programme aimed at bringing under-represented communities into....
