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

Rich Johnson nixternal at ubuntu.com
Tue May 22 19:19:03 BST 2007


On Tuesday 22 May 2007, Andy wrote:
[snip]
| No I didn't, at least I didn't mean to. Those are supposed to be
| separate paragraphs somehow I missed the return key.

Understandable :)  Thanks for clarifying that.

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

OK, I will take that as well, it was the enter key that made it read 
differently I guess.

| 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).

True. Maybe we need to figure out how to get more women involved. At the same 
time I also believe there are other aspects when it comes to the numbers 
concerning the race of people who are in college these days learning CS as 
well (this is from a US standpoint).

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

Yes, very much so.

| 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).

Correct, and I think this same underlying cause may attribute to different 
ethnicity's involved as well.

| > 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.

Gotcha, sorry for that misunderstanding!

| 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?

It very well could be construed as sexist I guess, however I was trying to 
prove a point concerning equality. These same women, well some of these same 
women have publically reported being harassed or treated as not equal.

| > 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.)

Didn't say you were, but that is what some of these women are getting on IRC. 
Granted IRC is at times filled with rude, obnoxious, and at time immature 
people, we kind of know that. But it seems when some of this has gone on, 
nobody really grabbed their backs and said hey, this is enough. A/S/L was 
built into mIRC I think, that is just sad :) I thought A/S/L was AOLish, 
guess not.

| 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.

Yes it could be, not a problem persay, but I reacted differently once I 
witnessed it. It was hard for me to believe the BS that I saw.

| > 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

Well, if it weren't true, then why would they be on IRC asking developers out 
on dates? At that point there I was somewhat irritated with responses I had 
seen off of this list concerning this letter. Is it possible to be sexists 
towards your own sex?  Actually, per the dictionary, I am not a hypocrite!

sexist
     adj : discriminatory on the basis of sex (usually said of men's
           attitude toward women)
     n : a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women
         [syn: male chauvinist]

So, I was crackin' on my own sex there :)

| > 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.

You aren't missin' much...well maybe you are ;)

| > 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?

HAHA! Lucky guess, but I noticed a lot of those signatures were backed by all 
kinds of people from the "Ubuntu Community". I signed it as well. This letter 
is to the community. So it is like an inneroffice memo.

| 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).

Thanks for the clarifications there, they were greatly appreciated and I 
apologize if I came off like I was personally attacking you.

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