Working together for a more inclusive open source community
By Killian Murphy, Engineering Director at Meta
The open source community thrives by making software available to all. At Meta, we believe this includes removing some of the barriers for developers to contribute to open source projects, and also using open source as a vehicle to improve technology for a diverse and broad audience. The open source community continues to grow in these areas. Meta is committed to better reflecting the more than 3 billion people the company serves around the world by supporting the community in this growth. At a time when the community is larger than ever, Meta is optimistic about the potential for open source to become more inclusive and, in turn, more empowering.
To make an open source project successful, it must be something that people feel motivated and excited by. In part, this means creating a safe and inclusive environment for all contributors. Last year, Meta made updates to its open source code of conduct to nurture inclusion in the community. The updates include consideration for circumstances where an individual’s behavior outside of an open source project might do harm to the project or the community. It also requires any project that Meta supports financially to create their own code of conduct.
In addition to fostering a safe community, it is important that we think inclusively as we develop emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an example of a space where it is crucial to encourage perspective-rich conversations alongside creating new work. As novel AI models emerge and are being implemented in real-world environments, open source is one way that we as a community can share what we are doing and seek input from experts outside our silos. This year, Meta has developed open source projects that aim to measure fairness and mitigate AI model biases in new ways. One example is research to create databases with more fine-grained demographics terminology. The company realizes how important the broader community is to refining and expanding on research in this area. Though Meta views Responsible AI tools as important to its business, fairness in AI extends to making sure these resources are available for all to access and benefit from. Open source is a valuable part of this process.
Meta and our partners recently announced the creation of the PyTorch Foundation, with the goal of broadening the governance of this critically important project. The company looks forward to working with our partners in the foundation and the larger PyTorch community to continue democratizing state-of-the-art tools, libraries and other components for all. Meta has similarly expanded the governance of projects such as GraphQL and Magma. We will continue to collaborate with communities like these to ensure their ongoing success.
Beyond creating and contributing to open source projects, Meta also supports organizations and events that promote a diverse developer community. For example, Meta partners with Major League Hacking and GitHub on the MLH Fellowship, an initiative that works to close the inequality gap in education by providing opportunities to underserved student communities. The company also sponsors and presents at events that align with growing the open source community, ranging from the Women In Tech Global Conference to the Open Source Festival.
We are looking forward to learning about the ways other companies and individuals are supporting open source at All Things Open 2022, and we would be delighted to work with others to further efforts toward a more inclusive open source community. The breadth of open source work at Meta spans applications in AI, virtual reality, data, developer tools, mobile, privacy and beyond. Explore the company’s open source projects at the Meta Open Source website, and visit our booth to learn more about our work and connect with members of the Meta Open Source team.
The Featured Blog Posts series will highlight posts from partners and members of the All Things Open community leading up to the conference in the fall.