{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01652892561983471, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.46, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
To Fork or Not to Fork

This chapter explores what diversity advocacy builds in terms of techniques of governance and sociality to support a subaltern counterpublic and to speak back to a wider collectivity of open-technologists. It illustrates the painstaking local-ness of many infrastructural interventions. The chapter also argues that the practices of diversity advocates are essentially an extension of the geek practice of argument by technology, an outgrowth of the “rough consensus and running code” ethos that defines free software development. But the interventions are not technical in the sense of code itself; they are hacks of open-technology communities themselves, which directly flow from practitioners' habit of reflective technical engagement. Diversity advocates are attentive to the layers of sociality that form the architecture of their congregation: they seek to re-engineer the structures that undergird their communities and their practices.