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

[Andy]

On 22/05/07, Rich Johnson <nixternal at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> (snip)
>
> 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.

No I didn't, at least I didn't mean to. Those are supposed to be
separate paragraphs somehow I missed the return key.

> Then you go on to say the following:
> (snip)
> 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.

They may do better, my point was not how good they are, it is how many they are!

Another point was that I was explaining how I got into "Linux". At
University in the CS department (first Linux box I ever logged onto).
If less women study CS then less will enter open source via that
avenue (other avenues of entry may be unaffected).

Maybe I should have put "There are less women educated in the field".
In hindsight that would have been better.

The discussion was about the number of women in Open Source, I was
suggesting as a possible cause the lack of women in CS based courses,
possibly a link there possibly not. Maybe a direct link. Maybe an
indirect link (i.e. there may be an underlying cause that effects the
number of both).

> I would really like to know how you can justify saying "women are less
> educated" in this field.

I merely meant there where less of them.

I can justify that statement by (surprisingly) counting the men and
women at a University. I make the percent of women in the region of
15%. Less women are educated in the 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.

And that is not sexist why?

> 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.

Don't do any of those things, (used to use a/s/l back in my mIRC days,
I think it was a builtin, long time ago.)

Or are you referring to someone else, because I haven't seen anything
like this. But then if it occurs "off list" (as some of the original
links suggest) then I wouldn't have seen anything would I? Maybe
that's the problem, not seeing what it is actually like. hmm.

> 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

One word: Hypocrite

> 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 don't use IRC quite as much as I used to.

> If you can back a DRM letter to Bono or
> Steve Jobs, then I think you can back this type of letter as well.

Actually I signed those letters (lucky guess (i hope ;)).
Not entirely sure how one would "back" this letter, who are we/you/the
community sending it to?

Andy

(p.s. I have rewritten this several times now in the hope it makes
sense and says what I mean it to, as a consequence it probably does
neither now).

-- 
First they ignore you
then they laugh at you
then they fight you
then you win.
- Mohandas Gandhi