Re: Elections Results

On 29 April 2018 at 11:10, Administrator
<admin-JJaFKVBkT/BLBidhBXjKY5m6VD3zJD3B0E9HWUfgJXw@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Although I’m not a voting member bu as along time use and supporter of (open)SuSE, and in the
interests of diversity, could I ask for a breakdown of the voting membership and board by gender
and racial origin.  If the results are as I suspect, what are board’s plans for addressing this?
>
> And don’t start with the nonsense about “unbiassed” and “meritocracy.”

LCP has already done an excellent job of expressing an opinion on this
matter which is very close to my own.

We now have a Board that is made up of 33% females and 66% non-native
english speakers. This suggests that the democratic approach of the
openSUSE is not doing a terrible job of ensuring the Board is diverse
by at least some measurements.

But regardless I'd like to point to a problem caused when we start
looking at people through the lens of "what" they are, rather than
"who" they are

> I’d like to congratulate Ana for joining the board.

You chose to congratulate Ana (a female from Spain) but seem to have
chosen to neglect congratulating Gertjan (an old male from the
Netherlands) and Simon (a male from Australia)

If I apply the same logic and inference as you aim towards the project
with your questions, it is easy to conclude that you may hold
prejudicial feelings against men, or people of Dutch and Australian
origin, or maybe old people.

This would be incongruent with the Guiding Principles which this
project operates under, which clearly states "We don't tolerate social
discrimination"

I think all 3 candidates elected in this election deserve
congratulations, regardless of what they are.
They are now part of an openSUSE Board who are responsible for
representing all of the openSUSE community, and all races, genders,
and other identifying metrics contained therein.

You state you are "along time use and supporter", and yet I can find
no evidence that you congratulated Sarah for her election to the Board
a year ago, despite your active involvement in the election
discussions at that time.

Assuming you chose to congratulate Ana and neglect Gertjan and Simon
for what they are, would it not be right to also assume you chose not
to congratulate Sarah because of what she is?
Doesn't that imply that you have a problem with German women, or
perhaps all Germans?

Do you perhaps see how this rabbit hole leads nowhere productive?

It's important that the openSUSE Project is a free and open Project
for anyone to contribute to.
I promise, as part of the openSUSE Board responsible for such
complaints, to tirelessly pursue and prosecute any complaint that the
Project is failing in that goal.

We do not need to force our users or contributors to share their
personal racial or gender identity information to accomplish that. We
have no right to any data which we do not need in order to operate as
a Free/Open Source Community.
In fact I personally think it's very important that our users and
contributors have the option to not share such sensitive information
with us.
I greatly appreciate the fact that we have contributors who feel able
to be part of this project entirely under an identity of their
choosing, perhaps one which is significantly different from the
identity they hold when interacting with other communities or legal
entities.

I strongly feel that such an approach is the true way to fostering
diversity within openSUSE, which is a worthwhile goal, long held as
part of our projects Guiding Principles.

Regards,
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