An Open Letter to the Open Source Community (Melissa Draper)

Tue May 22 12:16:24 BST 2007

Hold on...

People are strange. People discriminate. Some people have significant
hangups. Some commit violent acts against other people as a result.
This is a harsh detail of our shared reality; history suggests that it
has been true for a very long time; indeed archaeology suggests that
such extreme antisocial behaviour predates recorded history.

But don't, please don't, take some isolated, numerically small
examples and spin it into an issue that is one for open source as a
whole. That is known as stereotyping and is the source of much if not
most discrimination.

The evidence provided could just as easily be used to demonstrate
other issues, for example:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x28.html#AEN41
therefore Australians are sexist.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000700.html
therefore Germans are sexist.

Then there are the numbers from FLOSSpols (similar statistical
evidence is also misused in other areas of life), which neither
demonstrate nor even provide strong evidence that open source is
sexist; it is more reflective of the number of women in technical
education/sector than anything open source is doing.

In the last 12 months I have recruited three technical (developer/sys
admin) staff; two were advertised in more "traditional" ways: a 12
month placement through a large international student association and
a permanent position through posts on (i) an IT job board site, (ii) a
charity jobs site, (iii) the UK academic sector jobs mailing list. The
latter got one female applicant out of 16 total, the former one female
applicant out of 20 total. Neither of these adverts stressed open
source.

The third position was advertised on this list and on the Ubuntu job
site. This one is more difficult, as it was deliberately dealt with
informally and has yet to be filled permanently; applicants who were
made the grade or requested it were  communicated with either via
email or instant messenger[1]. Not being an expert in international
names, I can't say for sure how many applicants were women, but for
sure all those I can gender-identify are male; of those with less
familiar names, most sent a CV or an email which identifies them as
male. Of the two left, let's say they are female - that makes 2 from
40.

So I employed males for all the roles. Sexist? They were also all
white and all European by birth. Racist? All are heterosexual too.
Homophobic? No. Just what happened.

I don't think it is helpful to suggest that open source is
particularly sexist or a haven for society's misfits; actually, given
the anonymity of much of the communications in the open source arena,
it is both difficult to tell the sex/race/age of correspondents and
there is a remarkably low incidence of unpleasantness; suggesting, in
fact, that open source is non-discriminatory and not a haven for
misfits.

Sorry for the long post! Anyone wants to take me up on the points, I'm
happy to do it on or off-list. It is a subject close to my heart ;-).

Chris

[1] OT, but anyone who has contacted me and not received a response,
my apologies; the position is temporarily filled, which has taken the
urgency out of the recruitment process, and I have been
over-whelmingly busy recently - I will catch up sometime in June...

On 22/05/07, sounder-request at lists.ubuntu.com
<sounder-request at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
<snip> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 18:24:30 +1000
> From: Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com>
> Subject: Re: An Open Letter to the Open Source Community
> To: The Sounder <sounder at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID: <4652A8BE.603 at meldraweb.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> > Twas brillig at 15:16:18 22.05.2007 UTC+10 when Melissa Draper did gyre and gimble:
> >
> >  MD> As a Woman and an Open Source contributor, I see a number of behaviours
> >  MD> within the Open Source community that are quite counterproductive to the
> >  MD> community. Many of these behaviours often go unnoticed, and this is a
> >  MD> shame.
> >
> > Please provide any facts (URLs to logs, e-mails, whatever) to prove your
> > claims. Both your mail and report contain only feelings, not the facts. While
> > feelings are very important, they do not create basis for fruitful discussion.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> > Twas brillig at 15:16:18 22.05.2007 UTC+10 when Melissa Draper did gyre and gimble:
> >
> >  MD> As a Woman and an Open Source contributor, I see a number of behaviours
> >  MD> within the Open Source community that are quite counterproductive to the
> >  MD> community. Many of these behaviours often go unnoticed, and this is a
> >  MD> shame.
> >
> > Please provide any facts (URLs to logs, e-mails, whatever) to prove your
> > claims. Both your mail and report contain only feelings, not the facts. While
> > feelings are very important, they do not create basis for fruitful discussion.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-May/000864.html
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000700.html
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000701.html
>
> And this is just the start.
>
> However, let us not forget things like
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2007-March/000706.html
> which are far far worse and much more disturbing than the simple
> problems I have outlined.
>
> --
> Sincerely
> Melissa Draper
>
> http://www.meldraweb.com
>
> Phone: 0404 595 395
> (intl): +61 404 595 395
>
> P.O Box 1412
> Lavington, NSW 2641
>
>
>
> --
> Sincerely
> Melissa Draper
>
> http://www.meldraweb.com
>
> Phone: 0404 595 395
> (intl): +61 404 595 395
>
> P.O Box 1412
> Lavington, NSW 2641
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:48:08 +0700
> From: Mikhail Gusarov <dottedmag at dottedmag.net>
> Subject: Re: An Open Letter to the Open Source Community
> To: The Sounder <sounder at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID: <87ps4tb5x3.fsf at vertex.dottedmag.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
> Twas brillig at 18:24:30 22.05.2007 UTC+10 when Melissa Draper did gyre and gimble:
>
>  MD> And this is just the start.
>
> Ugh. Never seen such behavior in Russian community around ALTLinux and
> Debian. It's really disturbing.
>
> --
> JID: dottedmag at jabber.dottedmag.net
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 19:10:22 +1000
> From: Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com>
> Subject: Re: An Open Letter to the Open Source Community
> To: The Sounder <sounder at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID: <4652B37E.609 at meldraweb.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Mikhail Gusarov wrote:
> > Twas brillig at 18:24:30 22.05.2007 UTC+10 when Melissa Draper did gyre and gimble:
> >
> >  MD> And this is just the start.
> >
> > Ugh. Never seen such behavior in Russian community around ALTLinux and
> > Debian. It's really disturbing.
> >
> >
> Nor, it seems, had you seen it here in Ubuntu, until now.
>
> --
> Sincerely
> Melissa Draper
>
> http://www.meldraweb.com
>
> Phone: 0404 595 395
> (intl): +61 404 595 395
>
> P.O Box 1412
> Lavington, NSW 2641
>