My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

Carla Schroder, author of the Linux Cookbook pens this installment in the Women in Technology series. "[You] definitely need a thick skin in the FOSS world. It's a self-selected group, so it's chock-full of mavericks, the socially-inept, just plain trolls, and all manner of folks who don't understand the importance of courtesy and respect. But these are not representative of the excellent people who really do things. The best FOSS people are polite and pleasant. I do not believe that anyone is so invaluable and indispensable that they can be excused from common courtesy. The world itself is full of mean people, and there is no remedy other than learning how to deal with it. Girls are still often raised to be passive doormats, and they are not taught how to set and achieve goals, or that they are even worthy of going after what they really want. There are no shortcuts; all we can do is dig in, do our best, and not allow the naysayers to derail us."

to post comments

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 20:42 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (79 responses)

You know, I'm thinking about subscribing, but these random, feminist bullsh*t articles are becoming frequent enough to really hurt the signal-to-noise ratio of the site. Why does this crap keep getting posted?

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 20:49 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (30 responses)

Yes. It would be much better if that half of the human race stayed well
away, or at least shut up or pretended that they weren't hugely
under-represented in the free software community.

(there are times when I am ashamed of my gender)

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 23:38 UTC (Tue) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (25 responses)

I think it's been an interesting series of articles to read, but some of of the common threads running through it strike me as quite worrying. There seems to be a feeling that the fact that the community is a haven for social misfits and outcasts, that it tends to a straightforward, unvarnished honesty, that it expects people to argue their case when there are disagreements, and relies on a degree of live-and-let-live are bad things. I, at least, don't think they are, and view any suggestions that the community should change its culture to suit people that don't like it with some suspicion.

IME the Free software world is pretty uncaring about things like gender/orientation/disability/race etc. and that's good - anyone can be accepted if they want in. If some people don't want in, then that's OK too.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 6:40 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (24 responses)

You are just portraying the "good" aspects of the community. How about: requiring a brutal honesty, expecting people to sustain month-long flames, being largely populated by bullish characters, or relying on a degree of wild-west lawlessness. Raise your hand if you have never encountered them.

It is only a minority that displayes these qualities; but it is a significant minority. These things might be effective deterrents for women and in fact any sane individuals. I think we might have to do some work on them.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 8:50 UTC (Wed) by esr (guest, #14345) [Link] (20 responses)

When this community *stops* requiring brutal honesty, I will no longer recognize it or want to be part of it. Thank goodness it's still a place where hard issues aren't wrapped in fluffy pink PC bunting lest someones delicate widdle feelings get hurt, and thus we actually get *work* done.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:19 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

`Total' and `brutal' are quite different. There's no call to be nasty to people merely because you disagree with their ideas, but in some parts of the development community you can expect very harsh flames (we're talking the sorts of things that would lead to people walking out of the room at best and social ostracism at worst if done in RL) merely if you make tiny coding style errors in otherwise entirely acceptable patches.

And that's simply wrong.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 0:11 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Exactly.

Brutal honesty is one thing....

But much more typically I see veiled and outright insults, insinuations, belittling, and just other silly pointless crap that is completely devoid of any techincal or informational merit.

Just a bunch of people trying to prop up failing egos.

We are all guitly of getting things personal, but it amazes me how often people don't even realise what they are saying.

One thing to keep in mind that it's VERY possible to be completely and 100% right on a technical point AND still be a completely and total asshole.

In otherwords...

Just because a person is right doesn't mean that person isn't also a prick.

I can't wait

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:23 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

I will no longer recognize it or want to be part of it.

Many of us hope that day comes sooner than later, but we don't feel the urge to express it bluntly. Or rather, we resist the urge. Most of the time.

So, another positive aspect of not requiring brutal honesty, folks. As our LWN editors so brilliantly show us every week, there are many ways to express yourself. Getting to master the subtle end of the spectrum "can only be a good thing".

Neither can I

Posted Sep 26, 2007 22:06 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Well said!

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:26 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Also, human beings *do* have feelings and forgetting that they do is a very good way to destroy a project. (You know this, hell, you've written articles about it!)

People who can't interact with other people without offending them inadvertently should watch how everyone else does it until they can. (It's quite possible: I did it, although it took me five to seven years before I had enough confidence in my ability not to offend to speak up at all. It's still not perfect, but what is?)

People who can't interact with other people without offending them *intentionally* are a different matter and should probably clean up their act before they do the same thing in real life and it lands them in major trouble.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:30 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (14 responses)

Honesty isn't a problem. Hostility is, and hostility is often waved away as "Just being brutally honest". I know many talented coders who are reluctant to submit anything to LKML because of the perception that it'll just result in people calling them incompetent on the basis of coding style, failing to understand a specific aspect of the layering models or trivial bugs.

This isn't about wrapping things in fluffy pink PC bunting. It's about not discouraging competent coders from producing useful code. Right now we're successfully alienating vast swathes of the population. You're right that a change in standards of acceptable behaviour would probably drive some long standing members of the community away, but I think that's an entirely acceptable cost for opening our community to a much wider range of people.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:13 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] (11 responses)

If your submitting to a project and can't get something as trivial as coding style right than you probably deserve to be ridiculed. If your so fearful of coding style problems that you can not submit to a project you should probably see a therapist. How hard is it to investigate how a project expects code to be formatted and than just conform your code to that standard. It is really hard to organize a massive project when every one has their own vanity braces.

Kind Regards

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:23 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Which is more likely to result in a correct version of the patch being posted - ridicule or a polite response with a link to a description of the coding style and a request that the patch be tidied up to conform to that?

It's pretty straightforward. Supply constructive criticism, not plain criticism. Tell people what's wrong with their code and show them the resources they'll need to fix it. Act like you want their code, not like you'd be happier if they never submitted anything again. It's basic politeness, not political correctness gone mad.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:38 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (8 responses)

To clarify that a bit further - if my response to your comment had been more like "If you're contributing to a disucssion and can't spell something as trivial as 'you're' right then you probably deserve to be ridiculed", then you'd probably think I was something of an asshole. If you got a complaint about every single misspelled word you posted here, you might end up thinking that LWN was sufficiently full of assholes that posting was more effort than it was worth. That wouldn't really benefit anybody.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 17:37 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] (7 responses)

If LWN was a site about spelling and grammar I would agree. As it is, I am dyslexic you insensitive clod! No, really, I am. My fragile ego has been shattered into many small bits which I will now pathetically pick up shard by shard as I retreat to a more civil oasis somewhere on the Internet. Be happy firefox has a spell checker now or I doubt you'd be able to endure my posts at all.

"Which is more likely to result in a correct version of the patch being posted - ridicule or a polite response with a link to a description of the coding style and a request that the patch be tidied up to conform to that?"

As long as the devs themselves can point to a pedant or a clear coding style in their code base you are deserving of whatever you get. This kind of ridicule would happen quickly and early in order to align contributions. Who has the time to school everyone who needs it. There is a reason for the "F" in RTFM. Use your brain and figure out whats going on and how best you can contribute.

Trying to control how other people should behave to you is self centered.

Kind Regards

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:25 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (6 responses)

LWN is a site about people writing things that others read. There are published conventions for this activity, just as there are published code conventions for the thousands of software projects out there; but these ones have been available for centuries. I don't think it is enough to say "I am dyslexic" or "I am a foreigner", since you are obviously not trying hard enough and just hiding behind the "dyslexic" label.

And yet most people here are polite enough to ignore such matters, and to keep a civil tone; this makes me quite proud to support it, actually. These people (who have taken the work to learn how to spell) might say "use your brain and RTFLexicon", but they choose to be constructive and listen to you anyway. This attitude would be very useful on some developer lists I have seen.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 23:52 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] (5 responses)

Yet, despite your comments I am not going to flee the site or the community nor am I going to demand you behave any differently. Besides, I have seen the conventions here and I think I fit right in.

I am not arguing *against* civility. But I don't demand it. As long as someone has a point, in the end, thats what matters. Not everyone is going to fit the mold you prefer.

-peace

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 4:01 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (2 responses)

You may not be put off by this sort of thing, but to suggest that others shouldn't be is suggesting that they fit a mold if they want to participate. I see it in a more straightforward manner. By and large, people have a choice as to whether they want to be offensive. People have much less choice over whether something is going to upset or offend them. With no terribly good argument for why the offensive guys are going to be better programmers, I'd prefer that the people with the choice modify their behaviour so the people with less choice get to participate as well.

Of course, if you want to behave in a way that reduces the number of potential developers, feel free. You'll have to convince people as to why the community as a whole will benefit from that, of course.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 17:59 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> By and large, people have a choice as to whether they want to be offensive. People have much less choice over whether something is going to upset or offend them.

You left out the third part:

"People also have little control whether something is going to upset or offend someone else"

Some people are very easily offended.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 18:21 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Indeed. Some people are excessively easily offended. That doesn't imply that everyone who is offended by something is over-sensitive.

In any case, the same basic argument still stands. Your first interaction with someone may offend them. That gives you a better understanding of where their thresholds are, and you can choose to modify your behaviour to reduce the probability of offending them in future. It may be that the compromises you'd have to make are excessive (if "You're failing to acquire this lock before modifying this data structure, which could lead to unexpected behaviour" ends up offending them, for instance), in which case it's probably better to just tell them that and avoid interacting with them in future.

Not everyone is able to accept constructive criticism, and those who aren't are unlikely to make especially useful contributions to the free software world. But that's not the same set of people as the ones who can accept constructive criticism but are put off by hostility. Losing the latter because you don't think we should deal with the former isn't a sensible tradeoff.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 8:53 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

Besides, I have seen the conventions here and I think I fit right in.

The conventions I referred to, in case it is not obvious, are called "grammar" and "orthography" (or "spelling"). Some people stick to them more strictly than you do (not me, though).

As long as someone has a point, in the end, thats what matters.

Well said. Contrast this with what you said before about code contributions:

"If your submitting to a project and can't get something as trivial as coding style right than you probably deserve to be ridiculed".

People might paraphrase your latter contribution: "As long as someone has good ideas, in the end, that is what matters. Not everyone is going to fit the code conventions you prefer", and it would still be reasonable. Code is the expression of an idea, just as common language.

What we are requesting is the same level of civility in development mailing lists as on LWN. There is no reason to behave differently.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 14:49 UTC (Thu) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

What I'm getting at is this: is Free software going to be able to include the grungy dirty smelly realities of humanity or is it going to require a certain esoteric social etiquette defined largely by the dominant main stream culture, likely all white and docile. Technology was largely driven by social out casts of all flavors. Now that it's main stream are we only going to accept bathed vanilla?

man_ls, I've been responding to several of your posts here, please don't think I'm picking on your handle :). You may be referring to very specific instances of abusive behavior or even a certain class of abuse and I would likely agree that those cases were unfortunate.

I *am* responding more generally to a certain trend of gentrification of the tech ghetto you might say. I don't really have it fully worked out but I do know that geek, hacker and nerd do not mean what they used to.

If you have any foll up thoughts I'd appreciate reading them. I'm going to give this thread a rest, though... I'm sure we'll meet again, muhaha!

Kind Regards

Community faults

Posted Sep 28, 2007 0:57 UTC (Fri) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link]

If your submitting to a project and can't get something as trivial as coding style right than you probably deserve to be ridiculed.

No, you don't. Why do you suggest that ridiculing someone trying to help you in good faith is ever a good idea?

I'm one of the first people, when someone starts trying to heap abuse on contributors, to stand up and say "Go away!" but abusing potential contributors who've already made the effort to contribute is unacceptable, even mean.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 16:46 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

...reluctant to submit anything to LKML because of the perception that it'll just result in people calling them incompetent ...

Been there, done that. I updated the Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO and collected bug reports from its readers across two years. I submitted a set of patches to LKML to fix those bugs. I'll never do that again :-)

[And no, my code is not that bad.]

Interestingly, my code to set the TCP congestion control algorithm from Netfilter was also rejected. But this was done after a pleasant discussion and for a good technical reason. I attribute the pleasantness of that encounter to not CC-ing the code to LKML.

I've written a NAT module for Cisco's Skinny protocol for their IP phones. Not sure if I can stand the hassle of submitting it.

Community faults

Posted Sep 27, 2007 10:52 UTC (Thu) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

The old "tact filter theory" might be worth a rehash in this exponentially ballooning thread.

http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

You know, I now expect to see some theorizing about which side males' and females' tact filters are on in further posts. :-p

Seriously though, the impression that people are _rude_ in the free software word might be nothing more than simply result of how geeks grew up to communicate. You say it's "waved away as being honest" but what if it really _is_ honest?

On to your point. I remain unconvinced that getting people who can't take flaming to contribute is a good thing. Why? Because I'm not convinced that their contributions are necessarily better than those people's who you drive off. (Some guys like Joel Spolsky are fond of stating things like "good coder is worth 10 bad ones".)

The reason why I think some flame resistance should come for granted is because lots of code is not really an expression of your personality or artistic talents, but is rather grunt work that should flow from understanding the relevant theories and using appropriate tools to work towards your goal.

If you make bad choices and get criticized for them, and your evaluation of the criticism shows that it's relevant, then someone might actually know better than you. (A golden opportunity to learn from a master!) If you find the criticism highly juvenile or irrelevant, then you are in the position to say so, too. Discussions being a public archive means that meritocracy of its sort should run its course and decide who is right.

Of course, valid criticism (maybe "failing to understand a specific aspect of the layering models") also means that you really might not know enough about the system to properly contribute to it. (In other words, accepting the patch to kernel might introduce bugs.) I find this concern strangely valid. I mean, even a trivial bug can serve as a signal that this guy is not careful enough to get even simple stuff right: how could he possibly contribute something of real value?

Not to mention that code isn't everything. The person behind the code matters because future maintenance is likely to fall to him. And how well he interfaces with others matters because others may want to add stuff to his code. These matters are decided by the existing community: you have to integrate to it. If it seems hostile, then remember the tact filter stuff, give others the benefit the doubt and don the flamesuit.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:23 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Quite so. There are a number of projects which I maintain significant patches for, but which I'll never submit because I've seen other people submit patches to those projects and they are likely get flamed to hell and back for having the temerity to do any such thing, or at the very least snapped at: and it doesn't take anything near as harsh as flaming to make it not worth my time to contribute to such projects at all. It's not just people from cultures where politeness and formality is critical (e.g. Japan) that get turned off by this, although it's probably even worse for them.

Maybe I should stick all my quilt trees online: it's not worth forking all these projects for half a dozen patches each, but that would be a useful sort of halfway house for projects like that...

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:59 UTC (Wed) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (1 responses)

Why don't you send them to a distro package maintainer and let them push them upstream? Or why not use Ubuntu's Launchpad to nudge them in the right direction by setting up projects or filing bugs with patches attached? I can code but I've never made patches larger than one or two lines per app and I think it's a shame that if you have some hacks that could be valuable for all that you'd keep them to yourself. Just a suggestion - you probably know all this judging from your LWN comments so ignore me if I'm being dumb.

Community faults

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:40 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That's what I tend to do, but I have to get around to it. :)

(Also I've never really thought of using package maintainers for distros I don't use as upstream-intermediaries; it seems a sort of unjustified imposition on their time. But it's a good idea anyway and I may well do as you suggest.)

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 12:38 UTC (Wed) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

>(there are times when I am ashamed of my gender)

All I can do is give credit where due, and I don't hesitate to appreciate anyone's technical chops, irrespective of gender.
The point of personally feeling shame is completely lost on me.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:45 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link] (2 responses)

I think your ironic humor detector is broken.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 22:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

I hope you're right, I really do: but from later comments from the same
poster this seems not to be the case :(

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 23:35 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

Yeah, I retracted that in a later comment. *sigh*

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 20:54 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

I'm not terribly worried that the editors will be cowed by the above threat of non-subscription.

But if it helps, please feel free to double my subscription costs to help cover any "losses" due to offending thin-skinned misogynist trolls.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 21:06 UTC (Tue) by ris (subscriber, #5) [Link] (45 responses)

These articles, a small subset of this series, are posted because I personally have enjoyed reading them. If you don't like them please feel free to skip them.

Rebecca

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 22:40 UTC (Tue) by barbara (guest, #3014) [Link] (25 responses)

Carry on and keep posting these articles, Rebecca. I find them inspiring.
To paraphrase what Carla said in her article, don't let the usual
naysayers and negative comments stop you.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 23:19 UTC (Tue) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (24 responses)

I appreciate the articles as well, and wouldn't mind if you decide to either delete trollish comments, or provide "kill-file" mechanisms so the rest of us can.

Articles on how to increase participation in free software by underrepresented communities are entirely on topic. I think that some of the same social issues that are leading to underrepresentation of women are also leading to underrepresentation of Asians (despite the large number of Asians in the proprietary software world), so LWN might want to look at that as well.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 3:36 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (5 responses)

> Articles on how to increase participation in free software by underrepresented communities are entirely on topic.

We just have different views of what should be on-topic for this site. I don't care at all about increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in free software unless there is clear and convincing evidence that something is being done specifically to exclude them. Otherwise, taking action to improve its accessability to an underrepresented group is bad engineering, because it's optimizing for an uncommon case: why would we want to change free software to make it attractive to those who have shown by their actions that they're not interested in participating in it?

I think this article, others like it, and this entire issue are mostly crap, and the inclusion of articles like this decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of LWN. You disagree, so go ahead and continue subscribing. And as far as killfiles, I post here on average about once every other month, so I really think you can just handle it but I'd have no objections to a killfile feature. I'd suggest such a feature allow articles by specific editors to be killfiled as well.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 6:03 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

>We just have different views of what should be on-topic for this site. I don't care at all about increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in free software unless there is clear and convincing evidence that something is being done specifically to exclude them.

Looking at just the current front page, I don't care at all about Xandros's appropriateness for former Windows users, or dyne:bolic's releases, or FOSS.IN (I'm on the wrong continent), or security updates to KDE, or changes to Fedora's default theme, or even Firefox releases. (I'm using epiphany on debian.) Nothing wrong with that; even those articles that are personally irrelevant are still vaguely interesting for the sense of community zeitgeist they give, and it is not, after all, called NjsWN.

Perhaps you use and are interested in every one of those projects, and having become accustomed to the LWN team's uncanny ability to post only articles that you do care about, were so shocked by this one that you felt the need to complain.

Or... maybe, despite your claims, you do care about this topic rather more than I care about learning that PHP is insecure (I mean seriously, for this I need a subscription?). If the presence or absence of women in FOSS is so irrelevant, why are you posting here at all, much less threatening not to subscribe, swearing, and cobbling together arguments that would make a Philosophy 10 professor weep?[1]

I can't read your mind, but to us out here, your behavior just doesn't look like that of someone who actually finds the article irrelevant; it looks like that of someone who has a real problem with giving women a fair shake, and tries to disguise it (maybe even to themselves) by pretending to find the article irrelevant. I could be wrong, but you might want to think about it anyway.

[1] Okay, I was trying to refrain, but this is too long regardless and seriously, that first paragraph... once you unwrap the last clause from the obfuscating rhetorical question, its argument is "empirically, women seem uninterested in participating in free software as it currently is practiced; therefore, the ideal form of free software going forward would preserve their disinterest". Huh? And somehow this is supposed to be related to "optimizing for the uncommon case"; yet it seems to me that currently about half of the people who might otherwise participate in free software development are choosing not to. Doubling our contributor base would be a 100% increase, not the ordinary meaning of "uncommon". But, you argue, even losing half our contributors for stupid reasons is actually okay -- it would only be a problem if there was "clear and convincing evidence that something is being done specifically to exclude them". I would like to live in a world where harm is only ever caused by specific intent, and what harm does occur is universally accompanied by clear and convincing evidence of its source... but I'm still looking.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 10:00 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

> If the presence or absence of women in FOSS is so irrelevant, why are you posting here at all, much less threatening not to subscribe, swearing, and cobbling together arguments that would make a Philosophy 10 professor weep?[1]

I think you meant "101" there, but whatever. I think the presence or absence of women in FOSS is irrelevant to this site, not to the world. Clearly, I'm not disinterested in these articles. They actively tick me off. I'm not trying to disguise that.

> [1] Okay, I was trying to refrain, but this is too long regardless and seriously, that first paragraph... once you unwrap the last clause from the obfuscating rhetorical question, its argument is "empirically, women seem uninterested in participating in free software as it currently is practiced; therefore, the ideal form of free software going forward would preserve their disinterest". Huh?

No. However, it would be a bad idea to change free software in ways that make it less efficient or less desirable by current contributors in the unfounded hope that others who have not joined us in the past may decide to do so.

> And somehow this is supposed to be related to "optimizing for the uncommon case"; yet it seems to me that currently about half of the people who might otherwise participate in free software development are choosing not to. Doubling our contributor base would be a 100% increase, not the ordinary meaning of "uncommon".

I don't think we stand such a chance of doubling our contributor base. You seriously think that if we all standardize on Python and tone down the flame level on LKML to "slow cook" that all of a sudden 2 million (an approximation of the number of current male FLOSS contributors, pulled directly from my posterior) women worldwide will decide they love Linux and start hacking? Really?

> But, you argue, even losing half our contributors for stupid reasons is actually okay -- it would only be a problem if there was "clear and convincing evidence that something is being done specifically to exclude them". I would like to live in a world where harm is only ever caused by specific intent, and what harm does occur is universally accompanied by clear and convincing evidence of its source... but I'm still looking.

Well, if you don't have evidence of its source, you don't know its source, so you should go look for it rather than try to fix the problem without knowing its cause. I don't find the lack of women in FLOSS a problem in itself, but it could be a symptom of a problem if they are actually being excluded.

I don't think women should be excluded. That wouldn't be ethically right, it would be tactically stupid, and if I thought it were the case, I'd be first in line shouting that they not be. But, I don't think that's what's going on, and unless I see clear and convincing evidence that it is, I remain unconvinced. No FLOSS project I know of has a policy of excluding women or is actively hostile in any way towards women contributing.

For many contributors, this is a hobby or is otherwise a labor of love. And men and women tend to have different hobbies sometimes: I'm sure there's a pretty bad gender skew among amateur crotchet artists. Why do men and women like different things and have different hobbies? Well, there's still research into it, and there's a lot of politics and bias, and no one really knows for sure yet. But, we do know that they do.

I don't make judgments about how people spend their free time unless they're doing something that hurts themselves or others. I like computers, and especially Linux and free software, and I'll talk about it and promote it to anyone who wants to listen. Personally, I find that men are statistically more likely to care to listen. That's okay with me. People like different things, and not everyone has to be into computers. There are exceptions to everything, and when I find a woman who does want to hear about Linux, that's great, too. It just doesn't happen very often.

You can't be serious

Posted Sep 26, 2007 11:34 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Python? Crotchet artists? Your whole rant is a good reason for you to read the whole series. Please do that, and then subscribe to LWN. We will be waiting.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:55 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmm... I retract an earlier comment I made to someone else. I thought your post was a tongue in cheek attempt at ironic humor.

You really are a jerk.

I guess, if nothing else, your post serves as a perfect example of what the article was talking about.

why would we want to change free software to make it attractive to those who have shown by their actions that they're not interested in participating in it?

It's more accurate to say that the bluster of a few tends to drive away talented, creative people we'd love to work with, but have better things to do than put up with boorish trolls. They'd rather be where their contributions are evaluated on their merit, and conversations are constructive. It just so happens that men put up with this behavior more than women do.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:57 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

It just so happens that men put up with this behavior more than women do.

I meant here that men are more likely to put up with boorish behavior...

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 3:47 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (16 responses)

It's good that you touched this topic. In my opinion, part of the problem in both cases is fear of "losing face" in public. If you are in a mailing list, it is expected that somebody tells you that you are wrong. It is expected, it happened to me many times, but not everybody can tolerate it.

I have noticed that many persons tend to take the discussion private as soon as they get an answer to a question they posted in the mailing list. I have noticed a strong correlation of this phenomenon with the use of rich formatting in e-mail. It became so bad that I had to filter out all my mailing list traffic containing HTML parts, except replies and some important low traffic lists, just to avoid the frustration of having the discussion turn private with me as a single recipient.

For some reason, those people expect me to take care of their question single-handedly, and not give me the opportunity to publicize the discussion for benefit of others. What they don't realize it that their demand for personal attention would backfire.

It's really not a gender issue, although I can imagine that women are involved in many cases and can be frustrated.

Perhaps it's not an issue that the software developers can solve alone. It would be nice to have a psychologist around next time this topic is touched.

It's different basic expectations

Posted Sep 26, 2007 7:05 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (15 responses)

Women have natural tendency to avoid open conflicts, Japanese taught this way, but in all cases the end problem is the same: fear of loss of the face is great. So they tend to use personal e-mail to avoid public humiliation.

What they tend not to understand is that geeks absolutely hate private conversations: they are unaccessible to Google, they can not be pointed out later, etc. Actually it was explained quite succulently in well-known How To Ask Questions The Smart Way article.

And as you can this style is not just creation of misfits "because they fell this way" - it actually makes sense if you'll think about it! Yes, sometimes responses are too rude, but mostly they are justified if you value time more then politeness...

It's different basic expectations

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:40 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (6 responses)

Women have a natural tendency to avoid conflicts? Are you certain that they, like the Japanese,
were not just socialized that way? Careful about ascribing to innate nature that which is more
easily explained by culture.

Yup. It's pretty simple...

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:48 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

It's biology. Species where females did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) are extinct, species where males did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) survived (males are not essential for childraising).

And yes, this basic fact of life is true even today: man can pull all-nighter debugging something, woman must go home on time for the children's sake. So yes, males in general are more aggressive and rude. And they can "afford" risky situations. Thus while free software fights for survival - we'll see many more males there then females, when it'll become mainstream - we'll see more and more women there. You'll find significantly more males in startups, then in big companies, too.

Actually the number of women among free software enthusiasts shows how far we are from "world domination": we can only then claim that we achieved this status when we'll have the same proportion of women among developers as in proprietary world. I'm just very unsure that the best way there is to change community to make it more "women-friendly"...

Yup. It's pretty simple...

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:58 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm not going to get into an evolutionary pyschology debate here on LWN, but given that human
behavior is so mouldable by what they learn as young children, and given that we know that
different cultures can and do create wildly different levels of "noisiness", as you described it,
Occam's Razor suggests that reaching for biological explanations of the disparity is unnecessary,
when purely cultural explanations are both simpler and more easily tested.

Different cultures ?

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:11 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

1. You asked about "natural tendency". To me "natural tendency" == "tendency determined by biology". What is your definition ?

2. Name one survived culture where women are more aggressive then man. There are myths related to amazons and may be some small tribes, but all major players of such type are either extinct or never existed at all. This can hardly be explained by "what they learn as young children".

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:21 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Small children are usually taught by women and so taught politeness first. Only later in life guys are starting to become "arrogant jerks". Take the situation in Japan: while Japanese look (from viewpoint of westerner) always uber-polite yet actually they are using different speech patterns and women are not supposed to talk in public at all!

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:16 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Y'know, it IS even worse; I realized that I forgot to question how you got the idea that women are less assertive or aggressive, in the first place.

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 18:30 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

"Only later in life" do guys suddenly get tons of testosterone coursing through their system. Given how much it affects them physically, one would imagine it would have an effect on their psyche as well.

Nonsense

Posted Sep 26, 2007 12:44 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (7 responses)

Yes, sometimes responses are too rude, but mostly they are justified if you value time more then politeness...

Nonsense. As the linked article says: "The best FOSS people are polite and pleasant. I do not believe that anyone is so invaluable and indispensable that they can be excused from common courtesy".

Nonsense

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:54 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

So "polite and pleasant" is where the bar is set? How the hell is anyone supposed to police that? It is completely subjective. I might be able to understand "not deliberately abusive" but really, I just don't care about this issue of politeness. There is only one thing that matters in FLOSS:

"Show me the code".

If being polite leads to more and better code than it will naturally win out. If being a stubborn abusive jackass leads to more code, than thats what we will see. FLOSS is a universe of personalities. It is not supposed to be a personality contest.

The call for "Politeness" can be just as much a power grab as being rude. And just as pointless.

Kind Regards

Article lies - plain and simple.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:59 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

I've read the article and decided to ignore this stupid passage. Linus is brash and rude - yes, he's honest, always ready to admit his mistakes and he rarely scold someone without reason, but as he himself said "I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system". Ulrich Drepper (the guy who maintains GLibC) ? Polite and pleasant ? Don't make me laugh. Take almost any big project - and you'll find quite a few abrasive yet honest people at the top.

yes, there are guys who can be "polite and pleasant". Linus is among them. Yet this guise is rarely used among developers - that's more for tech talks, press and interaction with "outsiders"...

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:55 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

The "best FOSS people" mentioned in the article are not necessarily the project leaders. And the Linux kernel is probably not a good example of Free software project, it is too peculiar in many respects.

To me it is related to professionalism. Good professionals in any field tend to be polite while bad ones are often rude, to customers and among themselves. There is no reason why software development should be different, or attract Asperger types any more often. And yet Free software development has a displeasing share of these antisocial behaviors and even people that defend them.

LWN is an excellent example of how developers (and users) can be polite with each other. Discussions here can also be curt and to the point but they are seldom rude. Maybe it is because the comment editor says, "Please try to be polite, respectful, and informative, and to provide a useful subject line", and the editorial style helps set this tone. So it can be done.

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 17:54 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link] (2 responses)

FLOSS is an amature's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amature ) domain and may it never become the domain of the professional because it would be the end of it.

LWN tends to stay away from the sensational unlike some other geek news site that plays to breathless hyperbole and emotion. I bet thats what keeps the discourse at least slightly elevated.

Kind Regards

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:23 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

No doubt you mean "amateur". Please do not confuse "amateur" as the opposite of "professional", it is not. In French it literally means "lover", as someone who performs an activity out of love (as opposed to "for profit"). During some time in the late 19th century it became a derogatory term, probably when well-intentioned members of the unoccupied classes out of boredom started performing activities formerly in the realm of the professional. E.g. Sherlock Holmes, the original "amateur sleuth", as a prototypical example.

In Free software it is different. Many amateurs keep a very high level of professionalism, enough to embarrass many a paid developer. And (perhaps most importantly) many professionals love their work as much as any amateur.

And Free software is, without a doubt, the domain of the professional. And of the amateur. And of anyone who cares to contribute. LWN publishes summaries for every kernel release, the one for 2.6.23 will be freely available quite soon, if you care to look.

The best people

Posted Sep 27, 2007 1:46 UTC (Thu) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

Curious that you would choose to lecturer me on the very information I presented you with in my post.

-peace

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 20:43 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Being maximally picky and even more off topic (as a strong Aspergic whose
sister is a psychologist specializing in aspies gives me a bit of clue in
this area), there certainly *is* a reason why software development
attracts Aspergic types more often.

A major characteristic of most, perhaps all Aspergics is fear of change.
In many of us one of the ways this manifests is a sort of
control-freakery: that is, we avoid all change but that which we know will
happen well in advance, and that which we initiate ourselves and thus know
about, because being scared as hell is unpleasant. Computers are
incredibly controllable devices which you can interact with almost like
people except you control them and can model them sensibly (social
modelling of humans in realtime is hopeless, but computers are different).
So we *are* strongly attracted to computing, and within that we *are*
strongly attracted to software development.

But it is perfectly possible to be pleasant to people while being
Aspergic: it takes a lot of effort and a lot of lurking time, but it's
doable. Even if you've got Asperger's, there's no real excuse to be
actively nasty. (Social faux pas are another matter and probably
unavoidable, but apologising generally works to fix things then.)

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:14 UTC (Wed) by zooko (guest, #2589) [Link]

Here's yer killfile mechanism:

http://lwn.net/Articles/250334/

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 25, 2007 23:30 UTC (Tue) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link] (16 responses)

Keep 'em coming. The first poster is a case-in-point for identifying the problem illustrated by articles with similar topics such as this one.

It is a shame that F/OSS (and computing in general) has such low participation rates of women (and girls). This problem has *nothing* to do with gifts given to us by biology (body parts, hormone levels, etc.), but with socialization of both sexes.

Everyone should take a look at the old old pictures of the first mainframe computers. Lots of women working at the helms. Look at Grace Hopper's career. And ask yourself why they were driven away, and how you, individually, can make this field more welcoming for the 50% of humanity that are not participating at proportional levels as compared to men.

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 0:27 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

While in grad school at UC Berkeley, I took an advanced compiler class from Prof. Susan Graham. There were 25 students. All of them were men.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 0:45 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link] (14 responses)

Sorry, but as a scientist I do not buy this argument. Before I go on, let me state that I have two successful sisters of whom I am very proud. Yes, one of the barriers to women in computing (and engineering) is the rather male-oriented culture, but removing this will not magically change the participation levels of either gender to 50%. The inconvenient fact (with apologies to a certain ex-vice-president) is that a large proportion of women are simply not interested in computing or engineering due to the nature of the work. Without being derogatory, their tendency is towards professions with more person-to-person contact. This in the end does have genetic overtones (for a detailed discussion see Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature"). I am not saying that women are are not good at computing -- far from it (as the above wikipedia links demonstrate). What I am saying is that one shouldn't be surprised that more women do not join in.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 1:16 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (12 responses)

You're arguing with a straw man. The claim isn't that ideally there should be 50% women in the field. The claim, backed by extensive evidence, is that experienced, competent, capable and willing women have been driven out of the field, and your appeals to sociobiology don't change that. You are offering no evidence that 1% should be the natural number.

Whether an attribute has a statistically significant gender difference is meaningless. Men are, on average, taller than women, but many women are tall, and many men are short. Differences between the genders on standardized tests tend to be smaller than the difference in height.

Also, you're being unfair to Pinker by associating him with your views. While he does argue for gender differences, he also says

As with many issues in psychology, there are three broad ways to explain this phenomenon [of underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences]. One can imagine an extreme "nature" position: that males but not females have the talents and temperaments necessary for science. Needless to say, only a madman could take that view. The extreme nature position has no serious proponents.

as well as

Again for the benefit of the Martians in this room: This isn't just any old issue in empirical psychology. There are obvious political colorings to it, and I want to begin with a confession of my own politics. I am a feminist. I believe that women have been oppressed, discriminated against, and harassed for thousands of years. I believe that the two waves of the feminist movement in the 20th century are among the proudest achievements of our species, and I am proud to have lived through one of them, including the effort to increase the representation of women in the sciences.

even though he argues that gender differences probably have an effect on representation.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 2:04 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link] (10 responses)

As I largely agree with the above two quotations from Pinker, I am not sure how I am unfair to him. Furthermore, nowhere did I state that "1% should be the natural number". I sincerely doubt that the current participation of women is that low. Lastly, it may very well be that "capable and willing women have been driven out of the field" (which I am sorry to see) but this does not change the central notion of my argument: a large proportion of women are not interested in computing or engineering due to the nature of the work.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 2:28 UTC (Wed) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]

> a large proportion of women are not interested in computing or engineering
> due to the nature of the work.

I agree with the previous poster that the low percentage of women in Computers (far lower, by my reckoning, than even the hard sciences) can't entirely be explained by 'the nature of the work.'

But I also don't buy the feminist argument in all these articles that it's caused by an overly 'male' culture in computing. As others have said in response to several of the previous articles in this series, if the problem is that the computer field is too aggressive, or too 'male,' or has too many 'assholes' in it, then why don't you see similar aversion by women to medicine or law, where the aggressive 'maleness' can't be any better---and in fact probably is far worse given that those fields are more attractive to Type A sorts.

I suspect that (as has been said before) the real problem in computers, is the lack of social reinforcement. More women than men need social reinforcement and encouragement to be drawn to a field so many woman (and probably quite a few men, but nevertheless fewer) are prone to aversion from *our* field. The question we should probably be asking is why our field carries so little respect in society. Bad portrayal by the media? Not enough professionalism? Something different entirely? I think we can attract more woman to the field but it'll have to come about by improving our image.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 5:02 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (8 responses)

>Furthermore, nowhere did I state that "1% should be the natural number". I sincerely doubt that the current participation of women is that low.

It's starkly accurate, actually -- all the measurements I've seen have been in the 0.5% to 2% range. For instance, the EU-funded FLOSSPOLS project calculated 1.5% -- as compared to 28% of proprietary software developers. Basically, it's about as near zero as we could get it if we tried. Their results also accord with numbers from various large FOSS projects that have official "maintainer" statuses, my personal experience, etc.

>my argument: a large proportion of women are not interested in computing or engineering due to the nature of the work.

This argument, alas, is completely untenable when the percentage for FOSS is more than *ten times* lower than for otherwise similar proprietary programming jobs.

It would be nice if the percentage were higher, and explainable by the kinds of factors you cite -- such a world would not demand we ask ourselves uncomfortable questions and face difficult facts. But it is not the world we live in.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:45 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

28% in the proprietary software industry is a bit conter to my experince. But it is also influenced by the higher job security. Being a free software developer is not a very promising career.

So the natre of the work is indeed rather different.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 23:14 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

About the 28%, I've unfortunately never worked in the proprietary software world, so I don't have anecdotes; I have to fall back on data.

As for job security, I have no idea what you're talking about. My experience was, play around with free software some in high school, somewhat more in college, and then when I got my first job -- aged 20-21, with no degree or even relevant classes -- that record let me start at $60k/year, working from home and with no imposed schedule. I'm not the only one to have noticed that free software hacking pays off pretty good.

But I don't have real data here, unfortunately -- of course, neither do you. (Is there even reason to believe that purported job security is a major factor in attracting FOSS hackers, male *or* female?) That's the real point, isn't it? Your post isn't about job security; that's just an excuse you made up so you could stop thinking about whether women are being discriminated against, and go back to the comfortable status quo.

(Note I haven't claimed that women actually *are* discriminated against; but I would like to know one way or the other. You just seem to want to make the question go away. That so many people are popping up in these threads with this goal only makes me more inclined to believe that the discrimination is real.)

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 27, 2007 0:35 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

Unfortunetly I am unable to find that specific data point of 28% women in the proprietary software industry. I do find some general data regarding the employment "Mathematical and Computer Scientists". I suspect that those also include people in the Academia.

And if you don't have real data, then where is thi data point of 1.5 % from?

It is from a different research.

I just don't assume in advance that there is something that needs correcting. Is there something that needs correcting? please demonstrate.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 27, 2007 19:14 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

>Unfortunetly I am unable to find that specific data point of 28% women in the proprietary software industry. I do find some general data regarding the employment "Mathematical and Computer Scientists".

Yes, it seems to be from table H-1 on page 177, "Computer and mathematical occupations". Page 180 puts female participation in "Engineering occupations" at 10.9%, lower but still dramatically higher than in FOSS.

>I suspect that those also include people in the Academia.

page 181: "Science and engineering occupations do not include postsecondary teachers." Not that it matters; the same report also states in table H-23, page 247, that the US has only 1030 female PhDs working at universities as "computer and information scientists", as compared to the >400,000 in the 28% number. (Also, why the heck do you care if it includes people in academia, presumably people in academia would be good candidates for FOSS participation too?)

It may include occupations other than computer programmer per se; it's possible the FLOSSPOLs people were a little hasty in calling that 28% the same as programmers per se, and I can't immediately find any way to get a more accurate number other than downloading the full US Census datasets and crunching them myself. However, note that page 180 puts female participation in "Engineering occupations" at 10.9% -- these are non-computer engineers, who I doubt have substantially *more* female participation than computer engineers (and this certainly does not include anything like graphic designers or what-have-you). Note that while lower than 28%, it is still dramatically larger than any numbers anyone gets for FOSS.

>And if you don't have real data, then where is thi data point of 1.5 % from?

I said I didn't have real data on job security. The 1.5% comes from... real data.

>It is from a different research.

Yes -- research performed in the EU, also replicated at Stanford (Stanford found 1.6%): http://www.stanford.edu/group/floss-us/report/FLOSS-US-Re...

If one is worried about bias from surveys (maybe women hate responding to them or something, not that there's any reason to think that), we can also look at the demographics of existing well-defined groups of FOSS developers.

Gentoo developers: "Less than 1% are female" (http://project.repogirl.net/doku.php) (IIRC they have 3, one of whom is transgendered and was male at the time he became a developer?)

Ubuntu seems to be ahead of the game with 2.4% (i.e., 7 total): http://www.eskar.dk/andreas/output/PersonalProfile.HTM

The Google Summer of Code mentors meeting for 2006 had approximately 100 attendees, of which 2 were female.

I'll also note that as far as I know, there are exactly zero women working on any of the FOSS projects I work on, out of some dozens of participants.

The 1-2% finding seems to be very robust.

>I just don't assume in advance that there is something that needs correcting. Is there something that needs correcting? please demonstrate.

Some of us find it pretty obvious without any numbers -- we find the blatant sexism displayed by many of the posters in this forum, for instance, to be a problem all by itself (or if you want numbers, note the in FLOSSPOLS ~75% of women respondents have observed discrimination against women -- though only ~20% of the men have, presumably because there were no women around for them to see being discriminated against). The implicit sexism in the posters who continually find new excuses each time their previous one is knocked down is also rather grating. But I've shown a whole pile of numbers now too, and every piece of data I can find gives percentages that are a factor of 10 lower than any comparable groups I can think of.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:35 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (3 responses)

I wonder how did they got that 28% number - in my experience it's around 10%, maybe 15%. Did they count the secretaries (I mean assistants) too? Actually the male:female ratio was around 10% at the university too, so I can't imagine how it would be any better in the industry.

Bye,NAR

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 23:36 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

The 28% number is from the US National Science Foundation; the report is freely available, if you want to track down details of how they counted: http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf0...

The same report has many details on diplomas at various level of university, as well; as far as I can tell, in all cases women are far above 10%. Maybe your numbers are just wrong, maybe you are in a place that is more backwards than the USA (are there such places?); no idea.

Also, though I know saying this is futile: the sexist crack about secretaries was unnecessary and vile.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 27, 2007 7:16 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Yeah well. I work in a professional software-development company. We're in Norway, where in general female participation in IT is quite a bit higher than in the USA.

We're currently 22 people. 5 are female. Which makes 23%, more or less in the ballpark for professional software-development.

But those 4 women are 2 graphic designers, 1 assistant (manning the telephone, and doing simple menial work, no formal education) 1 woman doing cleaning and 1 programmer.

Which mean that among our *programmers* less than 10% are female.

Our graphic designers are very competent, do excellent work, have a solid education to back them and do a job that would be severly needed in free software too. But it's not a job that would lead them to post on the kernel mailing-list very often, even if they where doing it, which they don't.

When it comes to free software, I see no large difference between the sexes. 3 of our males are heavily into free software as users and have minor contributions, 2 additional have some experience with it. Among the females the percentage is similar, 1 of them knows free software well (though as a user, not a contributor), and 1 other has some experience with it.

A single example doesn't show anything. Just saying, from my POV I *do* see the problem that females are severly under-represented in technical work. But I *DONT* see any evidence whatsoever that free software is worse than proprietary software in this respect.

If anything, the female participation in the LUGs both here in Stavanger and in Bergen is *higher* than that. Not high, but higher than among the technical staff at my worksplace. Perhaps in the LUGs on the order of 20-25%.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 27, 2007 8:18 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

Maybe your numbers are just wrong, maybe you are in a place that is more backwards than the USA (are there such places?); no idea.

I've worked in three different countries, visited workplaces at other three countries, even in Scandinavia which supposed to be very emancipated, still I haven't noticed that 28% percent women. I had three female bosses so far, that's more than the amount of female software developers in the current project I'm working in (~20 developers, 1 female).

Also, though I know saying this is futile: the sexist crack about secretaries was unnecessary and vile.

Unfortunately political correctness sometimes leads to decreasing sense of humour. Anyway, when I was 10 years old and we had a kind of computer class in the school (completely voluntary, at afternoons), I don't seem to remember many girls attending. I don't seem to remember that there were any girls at all, even though the teacher was a female math teacher. I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with the impoliteness of some developers: if it's not biology, then it's a socialization issue at a quite young age.

One more note: I know a couple of people personally, who work in financial jobs. Auditors, controllers, etc. All of them are female. I don't know much about that environment, but I think it's harsher than software development, after all, they work with hard money.

Bye,NAR

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 16:40 UTC (Wed) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

Differences between the genders on standardized tests tend to be smaller than the difference in height.

Yes, but that suggest we want standard males here. Do we? If we are looking for a top 0.5% rate of a gift that's asymmetrically distributed, you are so far out of the bell curve that small asymmetries at the center mean large asymmetries there. Also, deviation patterns often are different - even when the mean value is close, the standard deviation can be quite different. You often see this on the other end of the curve as well, e.g. take the number of male violent criminals compared to female violent criminals.

What I don't accept is that the testosterone-driven rudeness in this male-dominated world drives out women. How on earth do they get along well in the legal section, or as medics? All I know of this world is that it is male-dominated, very hierarchical, rude as it can get (medics not mobbed by their peers are happy - not mobbed by their boss don't exist), and still the percentage of young lawyers and medics is more than 50% female. This doesn't mean that our rudeness is ok, that it doesn't have an effect, or that we shouldn't change it, it just means there must be more important factors, as well. It could be that writing FOSS is only very indirectly rewarded - you don't immediately get tons of money for it, it just eats tons of time. It's not even sure that you'll get reputation from it, when the majority of the outside world doesn't understand what this is all about. Being a lawyer or a medic is directly rewarded by a big salary.

So if we want to motivate women to come here, we need to ask: Why would a woman do that? What would motivate her to come here? I don't know, all I know is that women typically end up at places and activities I hate (e.g. going shopping for hours and even enjoying it), and the other way round. We males are here because of this itch and scratching issue, and we scratch ourselves (I have that sort of thought even in my mail signature). We have to ask the females who are here if they are here for the same reason, and those females who aren't, if there was be something itching that scratching yourself would help, or if it is more female to approach somebody else for scratching, and therefore, this scratching yourself never will happen.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 16:20 UTC (Sat) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]

You're telling me computing doesn't involve person-to-person contact?

Damn, you must work on some really crappy projects then.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 9:37 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (1 responses)

I wish to encourage you in continuing to post them, Ms. Sobol.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 11:04 UTC (Wed) by Viddy (guest, #33288) [Link]

To echo the comments of a poster above, the reason that I pay a subscription to LWN is because it has articles that interest me. Some articles interest me less, and some more.

Articles like this interest me, because as a guy I have an ulterior motive - I would like the FOSS world to be less of a sausage fest.
When articles like this pop up and tell me that should I have the opportunity to point a female acquaintance in the OSS direction, and that the linuxchix.org site may be a "lifesaver" for them, than that's good to know. Thats what I pay for.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 10:54 UTC (Wed) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

Some of the articles I find very interesing, some not, so I skip them, like other articles. Raving about "feminist bs" sounds like koro to me.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:46 UTC (Wed) by foo (guest, #1117) [Link] (1 responses)

This is an interesting article where theoretical physicist
Howard Georgi proposes that the qualities that actually get selected
for in the hard sciences' cultures -- assertiveness and
single-mindedness -- do tend to exclude women (since those
traits are often socially punished in women), but are not
necessarily the qualities that make for good science:

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200001/back-page.cfm

It might be a similar story for women on Free Software.

My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 28, 2007 5:20 UTC (Fri) by stephenjudd (guest, #3227) [Link]

Is it too late for this XKCD cartoon:

http://xkcd.com/322/

It's very apropos.