An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Derek Broughton]

Andy wrote:

> I am not at all surprised that there is a low number of women in Open
> Source/Free Software/GNU/Linux/Ubuntu (covering everything here ;)).

I am.

> But installing ANY OS is not a simple task to some people.

Agreed.
> 
> So what has this to do with the number of women in Linux/FLOSS. Well
> in my experience women tend to be less well educated in the field. Go
> and have a look around some Universities Computing departments, look
> at many of the CS courses. Notice something? The ratio of Men to Women
> isn't anywhere near 1:1.

??  It was when I went to school in the late 70s (by my recollection, 52% of
Computer Science students at Waterloo were female).  It has been my
experience that around half of the people I have worked with have been
women (quick count of the number of developers & DBAs _below management
level_ at my current client - 4 men, 4 women).  At management levels, the
numbers have always been badly skewed in favor of men.


> Note: As usual nearly forgot to send this to the list, why can't the
> reply to be at least consistent across lists!

Because good mail programs have "reply to list" and don't need a Reply-to
header.
 
> As  an end note, There is always the option of hiding you gender,
> although this should not be necessary. However it is not without
> precedent, it used to be common place for authors to write under
> pseudonyms. However it is not a good sign if people feel they have to
> hide who they are from the community they are trying to be a part of.

It's an option, but not a solution.
-- 
derek