LWN-style discussion

In theory, that's great. But in practice, it means that women face all sorts of problems, and you get it ignore that, because hey, they're just like everyone else. They don't get it ignore it. And if you don't care or think about people's gender, then how certain are you that you've never assumed everyone was male, made sexist remarks, etc.? I'm sure there are people around you who do that kind of stuff, and the human default is to pick up whatever the people around us are doing (monkey see, monkey do, as they say). If you're not making a conscious effort to avoid it, then how do you know you aren't?

> The code and philosophy is what's important.

Dude, we're social mammals. The philosophy's cashed out in the code; the code's produced by communities. Can you really say mailing lists, IRC, conferences, blogs, planets, conference calls, LWN, bug tracker threads, ... are unimportant? Have you ever seen a philosophy department take on multi-billion-dollar industries?

Discussing social interaction is in no way a distraction from the "important" parts of FOSS.