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

[Rich Johnson]

On Tuesday 22 May 2007, Robert McWilliam wrote:
| On Tue, 22 May 2007 15:24:52 +0100
|
| "Pete Ryland" <pdr at pdr.cx> wrote:
| > Here's a fairly recent example I happened to
| > witness to my absolute disgust:
| >
| > http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com/msg03636.html
|
| This was one of the examples Melissa gave as well (though indirectly).
| I don't want to prove your point about how terrible this community is
| in defending sexism, but: Can someone tell me what is offensive about
| that joke? It relies on there being differences between males and
| females which can make dealings between them hard, but I don't get how
| that can be offensive since that is also (partly) what Melissa is
| saying.

Hey Robert,

I will admit to actually getting a chuckle out it myself. I showed it to my x 
and my mother and they both said outside of a professional environment in an 
atmosphere where it was playful, OK, but they said if someone at work was to 
say stuff like that, it would be different. Everyone is different when it 
comes to being offended. It is hard to offend my mom because that is the type 
of person she is. Now with my x-wife it is a different story. She works in 
the IT field for the government, and has been mistreated because she is a 
woman. She has been hit on constantly at work, has been the victim of sexual 
advances at work. I know my x-wife and I know how truthfull of a woman she 
is, and talking to her this morning she has backed what Melissa and many 
women in the IT industry in general face daily.

So I think if someone says they were offended, then they were offended. It is 
definitely a sexist joke and doesn't belong in a professional environment.

OK, here are some other quick points to posts to this thread....

--------
"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 ;)).
The problem with Linux and to a certain extent Free software in
general is it needs a higher level of skill and knowledge to use. Yes
many of you will now yell those immortal words "Linux is user
friendly" and I agree to an extent. But installing ANY OS is not a
simple task to some people."
---------

I am sorry, but it is this type of thought that has help spark the letter that 
Melissa has written. You just incinuated that women aren't as smart with that 
statement. You are not surprised at the low number of women in the FLOSS 
world, and then you justified that statement with "The problem with Linux and 
to a certain extent Free software in general is it needs a higher level of 
skill and knowledge to use." I don't know if this is what you meant to say, 
but it was blatently put and is actually belittling to women everywhere. I 
know quite a few women in this industry that would walk circles around a 
great majority of people who develop software, maintain networks, or design 
system solutions.

Then you go on to say the following:

"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 could very well be this type of attitude that is keeping women out of this 
field. I have seen women do way better at my university when it comes to IT 
education than a majority of men. Maybe it is high time we make this field 
(IT and FLOSS) a little more attractive to not only women, but everyone in 
general. I know for a fact that in the US alone, the computer science field 
doesn't push out the amount of graduates it once did.

I would really like to know how you can justify saying "women are less 
educated" in this field. I know people like Melissa Draper, Sarah Hobbs, 
Caroline Ford, Celeste Paul, and more would walk circles around most of the 
men in this community. I am going to use Sarah here as I work with her on a 
daily basis with Kubuntu development. She hasn't been in the Linux world all 
that long, maybe a couple of years. And already she has been nominated by 
community leaders to become a core developer. If I am not mistaken, she will 
be the first woman to do so. I have seen Sarah mature over the past year and 
half to a level I have yet to see most men do. Caroline Ford is amazing when 
it comes to triaging bugs. Caroline has tore my documentation apart for which 
I am so very grateful for. If it wasn't for her, we would have shipped some 
very poorly written docs in some topics. Celeste is kicking arse for KDE. I 
mean she is rocking usability to a level that is just mind boggling. And then 
there is Melissa. She is pretty much Jono's right-hand woman! She has helped 
with this community more than anyone else I have seen. And these are only a 
handful of some simply amazing women that you will run across in our 
community. Is it fair that they should be subject to sexist jokes on public 
mailing lists? a/s/l? pics? cyber? The list can go on.

It is funny. I was thinking more people would be supportive and not 
judgemental, but I actually surprised at the reverse. And this whole thing 
about men have thicker skin, they don't complain about these issues, and so 
on. Well I think the reason why is most male geeks use this as an ego boost. 
The running joke is male geeks are virgins, and from some of the attitudes 
and views I have seen, I think it isn't running anymore, it is right here and 
real. Just because it doesn't bother you, doesn't mean it won't bother 
others. Like I stated on Melissa's blog, I was in a military position that 
was all men, no women. Typically a Little Rascals "He-Man Woman Haters" type 
deal. It was a combat engineering position aboard a ship that required heavy 
lifting. My first 2 years in this field in the early 90s (92 & 93) was all 
male. They changed it, and I will be the first to admit I didn't like the 
idea. It wasn't until I seen women outperform men in a rate that wasn't easy. 
And not only did they outperform but they did better on their rating tests 
and made rank quicker than most men. After seeing that my attitude changed 
towards women when it came to equality.

I will end this now, if any of you feel like discussing this further, I am on 
IRC as nixternal. Feel free to message me.

I will take this last bit here and say THANK YOU! to the women as well as the 
men who work their asses off for free software. I want to say thank you to 
Melissa for having the great amount of courage it takes to write an open 
letter to the community as such. If you can back a DRM letter to Bono or 
Steve Jobs, then I think you can back this type of letter as well.

-- 
Rich Johnson
nixternal at ubuntu.com
GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
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