Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) [LWN.net]

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...
aka a weasel word. Labeling it a 'symptom' is a Begging the question fallacy. You postulate your conclusion in in the premise.

"In the case of FOSS, well, our communities contain many people who drive away women by being jerks to them"
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.
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.

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,"
I've read them. (well, I've read the one done under the auspice of the EC, a couple of years back, IIRC)
Most 'arguments' in that study concerned society at large and had nothing to to with FOSS. The numbers were seriously twisted, and many time the conclusions of the author(s) were worded DESPITE what the numbers actually showed.
(in other word: make an hypothesis, test it and when the test failed to prove the hypothesis, just ignore it and claim that the hypothesis still stand.)

"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.
I would find it extremely weird to actually inquire on the sex/age/ethnicity/religion/... of a poster in some Dev related mailing-list. How could that kind of information be relevant ?

"For instance, there are people who[...]
Nice passive-aggressive tirade.

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 ?
(note: there is 1 woman in the top 100 chess players as of January 2010. I don't know why, but that is the case.)

"because we would almost double our number of contributors if we could attract more women."
99% (1) of the men (and 99.9% of the women) do not participate in FOSS, Why do you think it is more pertinent to concentrate of the 0.9% gap, rather than the 99% un-taped resource.

(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.