[UbuntuWomen] Mark Shuttleworth's comments

[Miriam Ruiz]

2009/10/5 bapoumba <bapoumba at ubuntu.com>:

> If you are standing in a line and step on someone's toes by accident,
> do you ignore that person? No, you probably spontaneously apologise.
> If you change the wording to any human group, would it work? No.
> "we'll have less trouble explaining to French what we actually do." If
> it does not work with French (pick up any group, I'm French, try with
> minorities), why would it work with girls?

This is exactly my feeling about all this. Had he just said something
like "sorry, I didn't meant that, I should have use other words" might
have been enough. His refusal to apologize and his cowardly public
silence about the incident is what have disappointed me. I don't think
that attitude is a proper one for a leader. Lets hope he thinks twice
about it, I don't personally think he's a bad guy or anything like
that, but if he really wants Ubuntu to be inclusive (and we're more
than 50% of the people in the world), he will have to grow up a bit in
these aspect.

I have the feeling that we're having the same incident all over and
over again every 3 months, just with different actors, and whatever we
might say we're just not taken seriously. It seems that every
Free/Open Source leader consciously ignores our complains, maybe as a
way to keep being well considered among the male brotherhood. It might
just be that I'm just very tired of sexist nonsense in the Linux
world. I have just attended the Mozilla Europe Camp in Prague and I
have the feeling that the attitudes in that community are much more
professional, why can't they -in some Free/Open Source projects- just
keep to themselves what they think of us and stick to a more
professional attitude? They give a very amateurish impression when
being seen from outside, and demotivates a lot when you're inside.

Greetings,
Miry