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

Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com)

Posted Feb 19, 2010 19:36 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786)
In reply to: Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com) by shmget
Parent article: Open source: dangerous to computing education? (opensource.com)

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.

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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.