A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election [LWN.net]

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 5, 2024 20:56 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (6 responses)

> I'm sorry if people need more people of the same gender around to feel comfortable, but the resulting us-vs-other thinking is not helpful.

Us-vs-other is the foundation of nearly all human social interactions.

And it works great....until it doesn't.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 12:56 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

Actually, "us AND other" works much better.

I believe it's known as "forgiving tit-for-tat" in game theory, and it's pretty much the best strategy.

What seems to work quite well in my marriage is we both - openly - acknowledge that if just one of us has strong feelings about something, that automatically wins. And it resolves pretty much all of our disputes.

Where we both have strong feelings it can get tricky, but then we know we have to compromise. And it plays into my other comment about "win win" - we know we have a win-win marriage.

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 20:04 UTC (Sat) by Heretic_Blacksheep (guest, #169992) [Link] (2 responses)

The elephant in the room is in order to reach a compromise, both people have to also lose. When egos step in, any loss becomes a problem. Despite the western disdain for the concept of "saving face", that's exactly what's going on. People have to be able to compromise, and both lose something as well as win something, but not appear to do so in a way that's humiliating.

A person's gender or sexual preferences should have nothing to do with their capabilities to contribute to technical projects. Misogyny shouldn't be tolerated. "Don't be a jerk." Religion, politics, superstition, social norms, and tradition aren't excuses for being awful to other people. Ever. Forwards or backwards.

For an example of language being a vehicle for innate prejudices I leave you with a concept so rarely considered: in English "right" is often used as a synonym for "correct" and the correctness of behavior: "the right thing to do", "he did it right", "right honorable". "Left" often has negative connotations: "left behind", "left to themselves", etc. If you're right handed you may never have noticed the inherit social prejudice this implies, but if you're left handed, you may have contemplated it while having to deal with being left handed in a right handed world. FWIW, I'm left handed, and pointing this out as recently as 3 years ago in a mandatory college orientation "diversity" unit got me an "F" on an essay, but I stand by my assertion as handedness is one form of bias and superstition (mostly as a bad connotation) across many cultures, historical and current, including the US. With the ubiquity of electronic devices for note taking, neutral handed tables are more the norm in lecture halls, but you still see the unconscious handedness bias practically everywhere. My point is falling back on semantics fails to recognize inherent prejudices using language to reinforce itself. Living languages naturally change over time. Sometimes that's for the better. It harms no one to be nice to another person.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 21:01 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> The elephant in the room is in order to reach a compromise, both people have to also lose. When egos step in, any loss becomes a problem.

Which is why you have to see it as a trade. I get something I value in return for something I don't especially value. And because you have different values, you get the same.

> For an example of language being a vehicle for innate prejudices I leave you with a concept so rarely considered: in English "right" is often used as a synonym for "correct" and the correctness of behavior: "the right thing to do", "he did it right", "right honorable". "Left" often has negative connotations: "left behind", "left to themselves", etc.

Unfortunately, this is where political correctness goes mad. Language is going to be prejudiced - it's just in the nature of things. If you ban talking about prejudice, you encourage it! And English especially enables massive amounts of prejudice. Because it's nicked so much language from elsewhere. You go on about right meaning correct - did you also know that left is sinister?

It gets even worse where words are perfectly okay in one dialect, and prejudiced/offensive in another ...

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 21:11 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> You go on about right meaning correct - did you also know that left is sinister?

It's like this in Arabic (and for Muslims in general) as well -- For example, one is supposed to eat with their right hand but (ahem) clean oneself with the left. Which makes sense when you consider this was proscribed in a culture where fresh water was scarce and soap was still very much a luxury.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 9, 2024 15:47 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

> I believe it's known as "forgiving tit-for-tat" in game theory, and it's pretty much the best strategy.

Note the context where it is best: iterated prisoner's dilemma. Not all problems are analogous nor are they iterated.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 9, 2024 18:26 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

But in the context of this discussion (social interaction) it is proven to be the best strategy. It creates a cohesive society, even in the presence of bad actors.

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 0:01 UTC (Sat) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (2 responses)

https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1775242637131350294

(While a volunteer organization is not a for-profit company, I believe the same dynamic is at play; a diverse set of opinions and experience leads to better decision making)

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 19, 2024 16:59 UTC (Fri) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link] (1 responses)

For the benefit of others who like me would target not visit another site to see a paragraph of text:

Mark Cuban
@mcuban
First of all my arguments are not abstract.

I own or invest in hundreds of companies. I know DEI is a positive because I see it's impact on bottom lines. Thats been reiterated by many CEOs.

My definitions of D,E and I are not theoretical. They are actually used. Are yours ?

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 19, 2024 17:00 UTC (Fri) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link]

Sorry, didn't catch the whole thing(!)

[continued]
You have sides. I don't.

I'm an entrepreneur and capitalist. I look for results. That's what I base my decisions on.

Every single person on Twitter could disagree with me. I would still follow the results I see in my portfolio.

Christopher and Jordan, you are running your businesses, building a community, and selling to it. This platform is a target rich environment for you.
You sell hard. As you should.

I respect your efforts. I may vehemently disagree with your positions, but I respect entrepreneurial grind and always will.

But Twitter is not reflective of the real world

Bottom line -
I'll keep on stating my positions on here specifically because they are the opposite of yours, Elon's and others

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 3:38 UTC (Sat) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (1 responses)

Ah yes, well, you know - everything in society with regards to gender and gender relations is equal and there are, of course, no differences in outcomes or, really, anything based on gender, so we shouldn't talk about any of that. It's not cool, anyway, since asking why there aren't women around means you're saying men are bad. Ah well - it's OK, there's a whole world of people who think like you. They're nearly all men for some strange reason, but that's fine too. We shouldn't judge them on that basis.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 9:53 UTC (Sat) by jhe (subscriber, #164815) [Link]

Can you build your argument on something else than whatever you assume as my gender? This is what i was criticizing.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 6:52 UTC (Sat) by chris_se (subscriber, #99706) [Link] (5 responses)

I'm left-handed. Last I read up on that around 20% of the population are also left-handed. If I was part of an organization with a significant amount of people, but other than me only one or two other people were left-handed, I'd feel very weird about that, because to me that indicates that some type of bias is in play here. And while I don't think that every group needs to match the demographics of the entire population exactly, I believe that skews as extreme as this are indicative of some degree of unhealthiness.

Granted, some (or even many) of the reasons behind this might not lie within the group itself, but larger societal factors may be at play. I studied physics at university, and while there are certainly things to be improved within that field, my female classmates also reported that they experienced much more pressure to study something else from non-physicists than I or my male classmates ever did.

The way I see it, the fact that in tech in general women are so underrepresented is a problem. That doesn't mean that there's necessarily a cabal of evil men keeping women out, or that the people who are currently in tech are morally culpable - it just means that we should work on fixing that problem.

(Though to be clear, historically there have been tons examples of men keeping women out maliciously - think back to women having to fight to get the right to vote. And it's clear that you can still find some examples in tech where this is still happening to this day, though thankfully this has decreased over time. The point of my reply was that even when that type of explicit dynamic is not at play, you can still end up with unhealthy group demographics.)

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 7:07 UTC (Sat) by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836) [Link]

India is much more progressive. 50% of STEM graduates are women.
Linux market share is really high, in a big and economically growing country.
The observation that there are only 2 DDs from India indicates a missed opportunity, and if more Indian DDs arrive in the project and they don't include a fair share of women, the problem is with Debian, I'd say. On the facts, the Indian candidate is right to highlight this missed opportunity. So many problems are solved with more contributors, we read, and here is an answer apparently ripe for the picking. The Indian candidate sounds well networked in India too, and she seems to be a good communicator.

Anyway, two good and different candidates.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/hr-policies-tre...

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 8:46 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> The way I see it, the fact that in tech in general women are so underrepresented is a problem. That doesn't mean that there's necessarily a cabal of evil men keeping women out, or that the people who are currently in tech are morally culpable - it just means that we should work on fixing that problem.

The fact that society does not see it as a woman's field is the problem. A lot of the pressure keeping women out of tech comes from *other women* as you say.

Okay, I'm going back years, but I was the only boy studying GCE Latin in my year. Languages was (still is?) seen as a girl's subject.

And in my brother's year (the one after me) it stood out massively, because it was the only year boys outnumbered girls in both Latin, and non-exam Dom Sci. My brother wanted to do them, and he didn't want to do them on his own, so he pressured his mates into doing it.

The big problem, is peer pressure at school. It's far too late to correct things after that.

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 18, 2024 12:20 UTC (Thu) by dvandeun (guest, #24273) [Link] (2 responses)

Studying the classics was of course the right and proper thing for boys to do for centuries, until science turned out to lead to better jobs in the modern age.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 18, 2024 15:09 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Studying the classics still is the right and proper thing to do.

Philosophy (aka Science and Maths) so you can think straight. Classics so you can communicate straight. You need to be competent at both. Dunno the stats, but before Comp Sci was a thing, the majority of computer programmer people had Classics/Languages degrees rather than Maths degrees, I believe...

I might have mentioned this before, but somebody decided to do a study (in the light of all these "why do we still teach classics" news stories). They picked a school, and a random cohort, and contacted *every* classics student from the cohort they could track down.

Typical response rate from an "out of the blue" study like that is - what - about 5%? They got more like 95%. And pretty much EVERY response was along the lines of "classics is one of the most influential subjects I studied". That's true for me, too, by the way.

Another wonderful quote from the letters page of a national newspaper - "I didn't send my son to school to learn to cook. I sent him to school to study eg the classics, so he could read a recipe book and follow the instructions".

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 19, 2024 13:18 UTC (Fri) by dvandeun (guest, #24273) [Link]

I do agree with you on the value of the classics. I studied classics first, and computer science later myself. I just wanted to point out that attitudes had changed because of economic factors; our ancestors might find it quite strange that we nowadays think that "the classics are for girls and science is for boys".

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 9:52 UTC (Sat) by atnot (subscriber, #124910) [Link] (2 responses)

You're the one who made it an us-vs-them here. What she said is very explicity us-*and*-them.

I don't know what it says that you think that's an attack on you. But in a way it does prove the point :)

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 12:50 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

The problem is far too many people think in "zero sum" terms. If you can change your mindset to "win-win", ESPECIALLY "how do I get what I want by giving you what you want", then everyone is much better off.

Cheers,
Wol

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 19:11 UTC (Sat) by jhe (subscriber, #164815) [Link]

Where did i use some group reference or othering? Were you replying to the right person?

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 6, 2024 14:16 UTC (Sat) by ianmcc (subscriber, #88379) [Link]

This kind of comment, obviously coming from someone who has never had cause to feel uncomfortable about the gender skew of people around them (until now?!), is why Chandran's cause exists. I wish her well. I suspect she has a thick skin, or she wouldn't be where she is now. But she will need it.

A look at the 2024 Debian Project Leader election

Posted Apr 8, 2024 9:01 UTC (Mon) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Having spent 1 year in high school as the only male in class… I fully appreciate that it's not the most convenient situation to be in.