Finally! Breaktrough...
Finally! Breaktrough...
Posted Sep 30, 2007 17:31 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Proprietary developers are in different position by nix
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)
My employer is US company. They need this paper for accidents. The "no discrimination" hysteria in US is such that company can be sued if it can not prove that it did everything it could to avoid "unjust discrimination". So if they got the paper and someone called female worker "bitch" and than said "bitch" sued the company - it can show that it's employer's fault: he signed papers so was warned.
As for courtesy and respect - yes, that's the problem. Respect is not a right. It must be earned. And optionality of needless courtesy is often considered a feature among FOSS developers.
And the topless bar story just shows that the same rules when applied in the exact same way to male and female can be acceptable for male and offensive for female. If the situation in FOSS is not like that then my comparison is wrong, of course, but then the question arises: what's the hoopla is all about if rules happily accepted by males are driving females away ?