[Bf-committers] Women and Open Source (Fwd: Call for diversity)

Toni Alatalo antont at kyperjokki.fi
Wed Jul 29 21:28:16 CEST 2009


"Summary
Many men in Open Source refuse to confront the fact that they need to 
do something about the lack of women in Open Source -- partly because 
they don't believe that there are so few women."
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=263671

I think that is a worthy goal for Blender development too. Also we have 
one or two experts who can perhaps give hints or do something ;)

This issue was also raised by someone at the BConf some years ago, and 
I think everyone agreed that the current situation is a pity, but AFAIK 
no one has done anything about it. I don't think many of us have a clue 
about what we could do. So perhaps that initiative could help.

BTW one thing that has surprised me positively in virtual worlds 
related dev that have been involved with recently is that there are 
relatively many female developers, a very active core committer to 
OpenSim and some others too, and also in other projects (Kirsten Lee 
fork of the official Linden Second Life viewer, employees of Linden 
etc., LSL scripters etc). My guess is that it has at least sometimes to 
do with the social emphasis of typical applications in that area .. but 
also Blender is partly similarily about graphics and animations and 
stuff so perhaps there is some of the same potential.

That said, I think many women could contribute to any area .. like 
hopefully the initiative in the post below will get some language 
entusiasts to Python core dev etc., and who knows perhaps we get a 
female 3d math viz enthusiastic with Blender some day :)

I don't have any ideas and probably can't do anything about this 
myself, but am interested in learning about the issues and hoping that 
someone else could consider doing something with this within Blender.

~Toni

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Aahz <aahz at pythoncraft.com>
> Date: July 29, 2009 4:31:55 PM EEST
> To: python-announce-list at python.org
> Subject: Call for diversity
> Reply-To: python-list at python.org
>
> The Python community is both incredibly diverse (Python 3.1's release
> manager was not yet eighteen years old) and incredibly lacking in
> diversity (none of the regular committers is a woman).
>
> Kirrily Robert gave a keynote at OSCON last week about women in Open
> Source, and I blogged about the lunchtime aftermath (if you're not
> familiar with the issues, I suggest making sure to follow all the links
> I included):
>
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=263671
>
> Thinking further, I believe that the Python community really needs to 
> be
> more active in creating diversity.  As my blog says, the first step is
> for us to admit that there is a problem.
>
> I believe that the next step is for us as a community to make a formal
> statement supporting diversity.  I've created a new mailing list
> (diversity at python.org) to discuss the wording of a diversity statement,
> along with discussing diversity issues in general.  I invite anyone
> interested in the subject of diversity to join the list -- even if you
> disagree that actively supporting diversity is needed, I would like a
> chance to convince you.
>
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/diversity
>
> Please note that I believe that the Python community is generally
> welcoming and that the Python community would jump on anyone who 
> behaved
> in an overtly prejudiced way (unlike some controversies in other
> communities).  However, I think that we have also inherited the lack of
> diversity in Open Source as a whole, and I believe that taking a more
> active role in building diversity will build a more vibrant Python
> community.
>
> After all, as Kirrily pointed out, the more inclusive we are, the more
> people we have working on Python.
>
> I just started a new job this week, so I'm not going to be pushing this
> any time soon -- but I also feel that I need to throw this out so that
> other people can get involved if they want.
> -- 
> Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         
> http://www.pythoncraft.com/
>
> "Many customs in this life persist because they ease friction and 
> promote
> productivity as a result of universal agreement, and whether they are
> precisely the optimal choices is much less important." --Henry Spencer
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list
>
>         Support the Python Software Foundation:
>         http://www.python.org/psf/donations/



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