FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

Posted Aug 27, 2009 21:03 UTC (Thu) by garethgreenaway (guest, #60483)
In reply to: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software by jordanb
Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

How exactly do you measure a contribution to free & open source software? Is it strictly someone who writes code or has write access to a projects source control system? What about people who report bugs, do they count? What about the folks writing documentation for the free & open source projects, are they contributors? What about the people who simply talk about & promote the FLOSS projects, the community managers such as Jono Bacon or Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, shall we count them?

Deborah Nicholson has been involved with the Free Software Foundation was several years now and I don't think anyone who knows how passionate she is about her work would ever refer to her simply as a professional hobnobber.

Stormy Peters began her career writing code and worked her way up the ranks in a commercial company that dealt with free & open source software. Only recently did she make the jump over to being the CEO of the GNOME Foundation.

Both of these woman are examples of women who are active contributions to the free & open source community. Neither one, like many others, doing it simply for a paycheck.

FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

Posted Aug 27, 2009 21:13 UTC (Thu) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] (1 responses)

As I said in that post.

And you and james_w have both so skillfully ignored.

I have no doubt that both Nicholson and Peters are doing things in their jobs that are very beneficial to Free Software. I have no doubt that what they're doing is important, and I assume they're both good at it and earning every penny they're being paid.

My entire point, in making that post, is to question if two people who were hired into the community might not have much insight on what makes a person come in by their own volition.

FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

Posted Aug 28, 2009 2:13 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You should stop claiming that they were hired into the community even after you have have been explicitly told that it is not the case unless you have more details to add, of course.