[UbuntuWomen] article in the Dutch Linux Magazine

[Vid_A]

Hi Akke,

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 00:51, akke hoekstra <akke at ubuntu-nl.org> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I've written an article about the Dutch and Belgian Ubuntu-communities for
> the Dutch Linux Magazine.

Please do link it to the UW wiki and if you have an english
translation i'd love to read it too :)

Inside Ubuntu, there was talk about the UWN editions going beyond
English. If there is a Dutch edition of UWN you could write for them
too. Last heard, "TABASCO" (his irc nick)  from Germany is trying to
get things together. Else ping us on #ubuntu-news on irc or the
ubuntu-news list to see how far that has progressed.


> As a result of that, they've asked me to write another article.
> This time about Ubuntu-women.

yay !!! will your article be in Dutch or English?  i wanna read it too :)


> I wanted to start with the flosspoll document about women in opensource.

both those documents are linked from the first page on the UW site and
i see that you already got them.
Not sure how the flosspols research figures came about so maybe you
want to ask the flosspols researchers directly. Ping me offlist if you
want to be introduced to them directly.


> Than try to find some arguements why it's good for a company to have some
> women working there (I remember vaguely some research of an university....)
> Next will probably be the reason why the IT-sector isn't able to be
> appealing to women and why those women who get an IT-job, very often dont
> stay there for long (thought we had something like that on this mailinglist.

Would that be EU or Belgium specific ? Because its not so for India.
Here we have on average maybe above 40% women (no govt statistics
available unfortunately) working in the ITES/ICT commercial sector. As
for Libre software its a similar low figure but we dont have India
specific figures.  Then, India has a completely different set of
challenges, not just technical but social too...too complicated to
explain in one email :)



> There are groups like Debian Women, L:inux-chicks and Ubuntu-women.
> Is there really a difference between those groups?

There is a lot of difference between DW and other *women groups.  I
believe this is a good thing, since each caters to a different segment
and helps address a diverse gap of issues. Example, DW is wholly
concentrated on increasing the technical contribution and from 2 in
the NM queue back in 2004 when DW started, they have grown to 10 (yay
, double digits) of the 1000+ DD's Debian has.

UW was started along those lines but for various reasons it was never
completely restricted to technical stuff since there was a lot of
resistance and claims that we were duplicating or separating, even if
we never did. To me, discussing packaging/testing bugs/translation
does not mean we are going to create a 'pink' distro but
misconceptions persist. YMMV.

That said, allowing a non-technically inclined person to contribute,
since contributions are not only about code, is important and makes
Ubuntu vibrantly diverse than before.  OTOH, its a lot more difficult
to be taken seriously because deep down in a technical community, one
is still judged by the "show me the code" attitude.

Linuxchix is culturally diverse in every way compared to UW and DW and
has some fantastic women there. Besides the encouragement and support,
I learnt a lot of community management by just being there, listening
and observing.



> When was Ubuntu women started? By who? Why? What do they do?

In 2005, I had applied for permission but it was only in Jan'06 that
we got official project status. The list was activated in feb'06 and
the website, getting official status for the irc channel, the
integration with forums* came within the next few weeks.

[[ * UF was made official around that time too. ]]


> Does Ubuntu-women have an immediate link to the Ubuntu-top? Were they ever
> succesfull in changing things? Do people like  for instance Jono Bacon
> really listen to what's being said here?

Not sure what you mean by 'link to the top' ? Does it imply "their
presence here" ? Then yes, sabdfl was the first subscriber of this
list and Jono's here too, among various folks from other projects like
Fedora, Debian, Gnome, etc... That said, I doubt if change would come
just on the basis of gender. Is life that simple :-) Like in any
environment one has to be able to convince and get the message across
to the listener. This may be tough for a lot of people (not just
women) but it helps to invest time to build relationships and be taken
seriously in the libre community. Change takes time !!



> What are the biggest issues for the Ubuntu-women?
> I remember things like software for girls and women, women who are not taken
> seriously simply because they are women, the totally different approach
> women seem to have towards rude behaviour. Women just can t turn around and
> act as if nothing really happened.

I wear asbestos, have lernt to ignore rudeness/nastiness (yes it
exists especially in local communities when some think they can get
away with it) and be persistent. My time as a volunteer is just as
important (if not more) as someone being paid to work in the Libre
software community and i respect that first.

IMHO, people openly hostile to women are easier to understand and
avoid. The worst cases are those folks that pretend to be politically
correct or pretend to support women in order to control or influence
the project or just get good karma by being associated with the
project. Such things are the most difficult for a person to detect,
understand and deal with.



> Ehmmm...... something like this is what it's going to be, though there's a
> good chance that there'll be new ideas as soon as I start writing.
>
> Carol already promised to read and comment the article. And ofcourse I d
> love getting hints and tips of all of you.
>

if you have an English version, I could help too. Feel free to ask :)

The above are my thoughts and not necessarily representative of
UW-esque speak. UW is too large for me to aim to speak on its behalf
;-) but I hope you find it helpful to write the article.

best,
Vid
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