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Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com)Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com)Posted Feb 17, 2010 16:13 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727)In reply to: Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) by shmget Parent article: Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com)
The problem you're ignoring is that people do naturally advertise their gender, and often their race and their religion, too. It's inherent in their name. For example, "Susan Douglas" has many people assuming female and white. "Mohammed al-Rafi" is going to lead to people assuming male, middle-eastern and Muslim. Ajay Singh will lead to assumptions of male, Sikh and Indian. John Wu-Cong will have people assuming male and Chinese. An American seeing VeNay Winston is likely to assume black, female, and undereducated. Note that at this point I've not even gone into other factors, like cultural cues from the way you use language or react to criticism; there are patterns of behaviour in most cultures that are perceived as weak when men engage in them, but are expected of women. Similarly, there are patterns of behaviour that are expected of men, but that result in women being seen as out of order - in my culture, the key word is "pushy". If an open-source project is full of this sort of behaviour, women stay away, because their past cultural cues (from pre-verbal age) tells them that they'll be ignored if they behave in a "natural" way, or bullied if they go with the flow. There are also patterns of behaviour that are cultural; I have struggled to work with some people, because I come from a culture where questioning the boss is acceptable, whereas they came from one where you must never contradict someone senior to you. In short, there's plenty of room for people to (unintentionally) drive away people from outside their specific cultural grouping (and note that most cultures have at least two internal groupings - one for males, one for females).
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Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 17:34 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Fascinating. "Susan Douglas - female, white". So s/Susan/Frederic/ would presumably give you male,white? "Mohammed al-Rafi - male, mid-Eastern, Muslim". Or a guy from US whose parent(s) converted and who happens to be a atheist... "Ajay Singh - male, Sikh, Indian". I wouldn't have the slightest idea whether it's a male or female name and as for the country of birth... why not US or UK? "John Wu-Cong - male, Chinese". Or a guy who had a greatgrandfather from China. "VeNay Winston - black, female,
undereducated" - huh? You've lost me here, but then I'm not an American, I just live there...
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 18:05 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Yes, s/Susan/Frederic/ would probably result in assuming male, white. And, as you've noticed, there are lots of alternative explanations for why someone has a particular name; these are just assumptions that people have made when I've suggested names to them (only one of the people was American). I'm sure that there are names you can think of that cause you to make assumptions (warranted or otherwise) about the person who has that name; for example, I suspect that most kernel hackers would assume that someone called Linus is male. Similarly, your assumptions are likely to be wrong some of the time; for example, most English people will assume that someone called Andrea is female, while an Italian will assume male.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 18:25 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
What you missed is that Frederick Douglas was a very famous Black man.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 18:31 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] Possibly in America. I've never heard of him before, and nor have any of my friends here, nor indeed has my (single) American contact. It goes to show that the assumptions people make can be very, very wrong. Nonetheless, I got his gender right from his name. And I've not even tried to get into cultural differences that indicate where you're from in any great depth.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 22:57 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Another name that would lead to confusion - even among English-speakers. Robin.
Most Brits would assume male, Americans would assume female, don't know about eg Aussies.
But the other thing is, simply the way you write. A linguistics expert, even without having a name to give him a clue, would be able to make a good guess as to sex and nationality simply from reading the post. In other words, we give away clues to our identity (and respond to clues in other peoples posts).
I'm sure many people here have a damn good clue as to my gender and nationality, and my nym doesn't give any clue as to that :-)
Cheers,
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 22:39 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"The problem you're ignoring is that people do naturally advertise their gender, and often their race and their religion, too. It's inherent in their name."
Really ? For instance 'farnz', that is your real name ? Look at the 'name' of the poster in thread, How many of them allow you to conclusively infer anything about their gender ?
"there are patterns of behavior in most cultures that are perceived as weak when men engage in them, but are expected of women."
Let me put it that way: the nature of Open source development lend itself to fairly easily conduct a double blind test study:
take a diverse group of contributor (or would be contributor), and submit their contributions indirectly, using randomly chosen avatar designed to project the said cultural/gender differentiation.
(that is: showing that the same person X get significantly more patch accepted when submitting them as John Doe, versus submitting them as Jane Doe)
"If an open-source project is full of this sort of behavior, women stay away,"
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 17, 2010 23:11 UTC (Wed) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] LWN (unlike e-mail based projects such as the Linux kernel) actively encourages the use of nicknames, rather than full names. And "farnz" is closely related to my real name (Simon Farnsworth). I've gone and looked at the names of posters in LKML threads, and names in the linux-2.6 git repository; almost all of them are using real names, many of which let me infer a likely gender, and in some cases, a likely cultural background. Now, I could be completely and utterly wrong in the assumptions I'm making (after all, they're built on my cultural background), but people do seem to use their real name when contributing to at least one major open source project. I note also that you're attributing a hidden motive to my participation here - you previously said that I couldn't even think about guessing what gender, race, or religion the participants in open source projects might be, because it all takes place over the Internet. Now, you've gone to demanding that I show fault, and started to claim that I'm insisting that these problems be fixed by OSS; that was never my claim. I am not demanding that projects change. I am asking them to be honest about their biases, which in some cases will require introspection; if a project genuinely wishes to participation by some groups, then it does not need to change at all. If it does want more women, or more Buddists, or more Zulus, and has a culture that deters them from participating, it needs to recognise that just because we're all communicating via computer doesn't imply that race/religion/gender issues are eliminated. I also would like projects that are deterring some groups of potential contributors from getting involved to understand that they're doing so, and to ensure that the groups they're chasing away are deliberately selected. After all, not all groups of possible contributors are people you want to have involved - I'd rather not have the group "people who do not, and will never, understand C" working on the Linux kernel, for example. Incidentally, your double-blind test study is not a good study; the point I'm making is that there is rarely (if ever) overt sexism or racism in successful open-source projects, and thus I would expect all projects to accept patches on merit; this doesn't mean that a project will attract or keep a diverse selection of contributors. The problem is in the way the culture of projects interacts with the cultures of possible contributors, which results in some groups not participating at all; further, every project of significant size needs contributors to do more than fire patches at the project and ignore feedback. For example, when Al Viro deconstructs someone's abuse of the VFS interface, contributors who intend to submit things that use VFS APIs should be paying attention, and noting what he says. You therefore need your study to look at why some groups are underrepresented in open source as compared to closed source; from that study, you can determine what needs to change, and where the changes are needed.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 0:19 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Oh, lovely. Let me see if I got it right:
* we are assumed to have biases acting against mostly unspecified groups * it's not the accusers' responsibility to provide any examples, let alone evidence. * _we_ should come up with the list of such biases, or admit dishonesty. * no, showing the lack of discrimination against a group is not enough (are you seriously saying that you can recognize Buddhists by email address, BTW?); the biases are supposed to be in culture being uncomfortable for group in question.
Frankly, it's getting SCO-worthy. The same kind of logics...
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 10:03 UTC (Thu) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] I'm afraid you got it wrong:
The point is that unreasonable discrimination is not just the obvious "ooh look. This patch is from A GURL! It's not worth reading." It's also subtler issues that put people off from contributing at all.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 1:50 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"I could be completely and utterly wrong in the assumptions I'm making [...], but people do seem to use their real name when contributing to at least one major open source project."
All I can tell is that, in the linux kernel they use 'real looking' names. I have no way to know if 'Jim Smith' is really a man, as the firstname tend to indicate, or a 'nom de plume'.
"I note also that you're attributing a hidden motive to my participation here"
"and started to claim that I'm insisting that these problems be fixed by OSS; that was never my claim."
"...if a project genuinely wishes to participation by some groups, then it does not need to change at all."
"If it does want more women, or more Buddists, or more Zulus"
"it needs to recognise that just because we're all communicating via computer doesn't imply that race/religion/gender issues are eliminated."
"Incidentally, your double-blind test study is not a good study; the point I'm making is that there is rarely (if ever) overt sexism or racism in successful open-source projects, and thus I would expect all projects to accept patches on merit; this doesn't mean that a project will attract or keep a diverse selection of contributors."
Most of the objections as I understand them, are based on the discrimination, sexism of the potential contributor's cultural background (In my culture I'm expected to behave submissively(for example), therefore the OSS project must set the same expectation for me, or I won't fell comfortable - yes this is what "a culture that deters them from participating" means). Why should a tentative meritocracy goes out of its way to accommodate other's sexism/discrimination ?
"every project of significant size needs contributors to do more than fire patches at the project"
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 10:21 UTC (Thu) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] We're, I think, agreeing violently. My point is that discrimination that results in an open source project not being a meritocracy can be subtle, and that projects should be aware of this, and should try and correct for their own subtle discrimination. If I've understood you correctly, you're claiming that open source projects should be aiming to be true meritocracies, so that when the stats come up bad, it's a reflection not of open source culture, but of the wider world we find ourselves in. These are not opposing viewpoints; unfortunately, some people in my camp have a nasty habit of assuming that until the stats are balanced, the project in which the stats are unbalanced has a problem. This is not my viewpoint; I argue that for as long as society as a whole has a problem, projects should watch themselves for signs that they've stopped being meritocracies.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 23:17 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"projects should watch themselves for signs that they've stopped being meritocracies."
I do agree with that...
I just strongly disagree that the demographic breakdown of the contributor list is such a sign.
Quite frankly, as far as I am concerned, the worse part about being called an idiot of mailing list is when I come to realize that I WAS indeed an idiot... otherwise, a Courteline quote comes to mine
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 20:34 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
I think you definitely want to attract women, just for the sake of it. They represent about 50% of the world population, and thus 50% of potential contributors. If you do something that deters women specifically, you handicap yourself. The same goes for any other demographic, but especially women are a huge resource that open source communities just miss out on.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 20:42 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
there is a huge difference between working to avoid deterring anyone from contributing and saying that you want contributers of a certain flavor just for the sake of it.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 22:01 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
Theoretically maybe, but you need to know what you're doing wrong and turn that around by targeting those specific minorities. Just having some vague goal of allowing anyone to participate will not solve the very real problem.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 23:01 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"They represent about 50% of the world population, and thus 50% of potential contributors."
Asian-American represent about 5% of the US population, African-America represent about 12% of the us population, therefore according to your argument, the NBA should have 12% f black and 5% of Asian, otherwise that indicate a 'very real problem'.
Theses kind of fallacious use of stats are really annoying.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 18, 2010 23:58 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
Oh I forgot another 'organization' with such a 'very real problem': Health-care providers.
In the US, among the 90 years old or older, there is only 24% of men. Surely that indicated that Health-care providers are sexist and that there is a 'very real problem' that need to be addressed their indisputably proven bias against men.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 19, 2010 0:54 UTC (Fri) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
What? No-one thinks that it is always, inherently, a problem to have a gender imbalance in every domain. (This just in! Very few men bear children! Also, very few women are diagnosed with prostate cancer! Oh noes!) That's a straw-man you just made up.
A gender imbalance is a clue -- a symptom -- that shows there must be something going on to create the imbalance -- especially when the imbalance is as ridiculously huge as it is in FOSS. The question then is whether that "something" is something we want to support. In the case of health care providers, well, women tend to live a bit longer, doesn't seem to have anything to do with the health care providers. In the case of FOSS, well, our communities contain many people who drive away women by being jerks to them, and many more people who stand by and let it happen. (Seriously, this is *copiously* documented, see any of the formal studies, talk to any woman in FOSS, read any previous LWN article/discussion on the subject, etc.) That's a little different.
For instance, there are people who -- whenever this issue comes up -- start flaming, making up straw men, and otherwise trying to derail reasoned discussion. This kind of nonsense is very effective at telling potential developers that any problems they have will be ignored or mocked, and that their presence is not valued, so they go somewhere else.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 19, 2010 4:33 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"That's a straw-man you just made up."
"doesn't seem to have anything to do with the health care providers" That was not a straw-man, that was sarcasm... It didn't realize that I needed <sarcasm/> tag around that.
A gender imbalance is a [..] a symptom...
"In the case of FOSS, well, our communities contain many people who drive away women by being jerks to them"
Again, referring to previous post. Establish that contributions in a project are rejected on the ground of sex/race or other irrelevant factor.. then you'll have a case that that project need adjusting.
"(Seriously, this is *copiously* documented, see any of the formal studies,"
"talk to any woman in FOSS" And how would I know that I'm 'talking' to a woman, are you one ? Should I take your word for it ? Am I one ? Please indulge me with your expert guess.
"For instance, there are people who[...]
The whole "watch you language, there are women around" lobbying is highly condescending. I find that kind of Dark-aged chivalry much more offensive than the occasional sexist jerk. Women do not need a FOSS paralympic to win medals.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 19, 2010 5:29 UTC (Fri) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> Nope. There are certainly people who are jerk, but they are mostly equal-opportunity jerk. Since everyone is subjected to the same amount of 'jerkitude', it is not discriminatory.
This is not true. Again, ask the women who participate. The EC study you dislike found that 80% of women who responded had noticed sexist behavior. I.e., non-equal-opportunity jerkitude. Or, y'know, look at any of these threads.
> Claiming that women are poor soft thing that can take it, in such a drastic fashion that it explain the demographic ratio, is actually insulting to women.
Nonsense. I couldn't take half the stuff some of the women who participate have to put up with (which goes up to and including death threats). I'm not still here because I have a tougher skin, I'm still here because I don't need one.
> "talk to any woman in FOSS" And how would I know that I'm 'talking' to a woman, are you one ? Should I take your word for it ? Am I one ? Please indulge me with your expert guess.
So, uh, how is that a response? Is the claim that since you can't find any women (and obviously you've looked very hard, it's not like they have blogs and give keynotes on sexism in FOSS and maintain wikis documenting sexist behavior or anything), then what they say is irrelevant?
> The whole "watch you language, there are women around" lobbying is highly condescending. I find that kind of Dark-aged chivalry much more offensive than the occasional sexist jerk.
You're right, that's a pretty sexist way of looking at things. But you're the one who's reading that into my comments. I'm just saying that acting like sexist jerks causes harm to people and communities. "Try not to do harm" is not a particularly dark-aged value, AFAIK. YMMV.
And did you really just claim the right to judge some sorts of sexism particularly offensive, and others relatively harmless, on behalf of those women you can't find to talk to? That's very, well... chivalrous of you.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 19, 2010 19:36 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
So, are you saying that women have a natural tendency to not participate in FOSS? I can't believe that's what you're saying. What do you think accounts for the low numbers of women in FOSS?
What I'm saying, is that women and men have an equal tendency to get interested in FOSS. So following from that, there should be around 50% women in FOSS. The *fact* that this is NOT the case means we're missing out on that HUGE resource.
That's a huge problem, because we would almost double our number of contributors if we could attract more women.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 20, 2010 0:40 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"What I'm saying, is that women and men have an equal tendency to get interested in FOSS."
I understand that is what you're saying. But do you have any data to back-up that claim, or is it just wishful thinking ?
"So following from that, there should be around 50% women in FOSS."
Yet it is not the case, so _maybe_ your postulate is wrong ?
Let me try another way:
s/FOSS/Chess/ in your statement... what do you conclude ?
"because we would almost double our number of contributors if we could attract more women."
(1): I could not found data. I picked a number. 67 millions distinct OSS contributors worldwide sound like a generous estimate. But the same argument would hold with 90% - 99% - and I quite certain that there is not 670 millions of open source contributors.
Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) Posted Feb 20, 2010 14:34 UTC (Sat) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
You can try it any way you want, but you're avoiding the issue. Women are not somehow less interested in FOSS. Asians are not somehow less interested in FOSS. Muslims are not somehow less interested in FOSS. They are very normal people with the same kind of interests as Christian white males.
What they are, is scared away by a crowd of otherwise very normal people who just don't know that they make minorities uncomfortable. And the fact is, if you are aware of that issue, you can double the community. Tell me again how you are going to double the FOSS community.
I don't care about chess, so I don't care to figure out if there is a problem there.
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