History of DEI Badging Initiative

History-of-DEI-Badging-Initiative

In 2020, CHAOSS DEI Badging was launched - it was inspired by both the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Badging program and the Journal of OpenSource Software (JOSS) while implementing the DEI metrics of the CHAOSS Project. OpenSSF provided the structure for the CHAOSS Badging initiative, while JOSS provided the recommendation for an open and transparent process flow (peer-review system).

Before the start of the Badging initiative, the DEI working group of the CHAOSS project was getting much awareness in the OpenSource ecosystem, this awareness was focused on both issues to work on and opportunities in the community. The awareness around the DEI metric issues varies from how to understand and measure diversity, equity, and inclusion in open-source. Understanding DEI was easy and feasible but measuring DEI and real-world application of the metrics was missing. During this time Matt Cantu Snell was doing a pilot study at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and together with Matt Germonprez conducted a survey about people's interest in OpenSSF and the OpenSSF Badging program. After the survey and some research, they discovered that the OpenSSF Badging program fit into the missing part of the DEI metrics which was the real-life application of the DEI metrics.

The CHAOSS project Badging iInitiative was officially kickstarted during the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program in 2020. The GSoC participants who worked on it were Aashtha Bist and Ore-Aruwaji Tola. Ore-Aruwaji Tola worked on the translation process between different metrics which helped the badging initiative, Aashtha worked on starting up the badging initiative, understanding it, and putting together the documentation of the badging initiative. In course of the GSoC 2020 program, Tola and Aashtha did amazing work with the Badging initiative and the DEI metrics project.

The badging initiative faced some challenges at the beginning, mainly in educating people to understand the goal and the concept of Badging, how to work on the onboarding process of reviewers, moderators, and every other person that wanted to contribute to the badging initiative. Some of the major successes of the badging initiative in its early stage was the ability of the team to be flexible, reasonable, and open to feedback.