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

[Jim Smyth]

I don't think that the lack of women is specific to Open Source, but
IT and sciences in general. Frankly, the only thing that should really
matter is an individual's ability to develop and contribute, which
gender should have no impact on. Sure, I'd love for OSS to have a more
balanced singles-scene, but women will join development when they want
to. It's not like people are being turned away from contributing to
Blender because they're female. I don't think we should worry about
balancing the gender of developers any more than balancing their hair
color.

"After all, as Kirrily pointed out, the more inclusive we are, the
more people we have working on Python." - This seems to imply the
problem is that Python discourages women from joining development,
which is certainly not the case.

As far as I can tell, development on Blender (like python) is entirely
results-driven and I've never heard of anyone on this project (or
really any major OSS project) turned away or discouraged for reasons
of race, gender, or creed. Mandating diversity is no better than
mandating homogeneity. Let's concern ourselves only with what a person
contributes to the project and ignore everything else, because it
really shouldn't matter.

If you really see gender balance as a problem that needs to be
addressed, please realize that the problem isn't on this end. The
problem is core cultural values that teach women that math and
technology are fields for men and many cultures actively discourage
women from entering those fields. These issues must be addressed by
those respective cultures, and really is outside the purview of
projects such as this.

- DirectEdition

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 3:28 PM, Toni Alatalo<antont at kyperjokki.fi> wrote:
> "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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