[UbuntuWomen] Article: "Do women matter in FOSS projects?"

[Vid Ayer]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 12:10 AM, Elizabeth Krumbach <lyz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Sam Varghese of iTWire wrote this article "Do women matter in FOSS projects?"
>
> http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22467/1090/

Although his article is very close it does not clearly talk of how the
"subtle, behind-the-scenes intimidation" works (in both real life and
online scenario too).  IME, it is not unusual to be abused on mailing
lists and/or called names (militant feminist, etc..), have your email
address spoofed to send porn messages, and such like. I could go on
but wont.

That said its not unusual for women to not get support from other
women (for reasons best known to them), so I'm glad we have UW and
LinuxChix. In the latter, it recently came to light that a man
subscribed to the grrls-only list pretending to be a woman, and
trolled some of us.  People must realise that its unacceptable to
stalk, bully and intimidate women (and men) by pretending to be a
CEO/VP, complaining to their employers, or pretending to support women
in Libre software. Suffice it to say that LC took action :)

I dont have a solution to the existing problem(s) but if anything it
made me realise that being silent in the face of subtle intimidation
is detrimental to women in Libre software.

-- 
Vid
|| http://www.svaksha.com || Dreams are not what you see in your
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Dr.APJKalam ||