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The reasons for the lack of female participation in open source are a touchy subject, and I probably risk offending some folks, but the fact is that the movement is largely made up of male computer nerds with few social skills and little female contact. My guess is that women fare better in proprietary software development because it implies a level of professionalism, since if you can't interact well socially with co-workers, you usually don't work there anymore.

Richard Stallman made some infamous remarks at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit about "EMAC virgins", explicitly defining them as women who needed to be "relieved" of their EMACS virginity as a "holy duty." RMS defended it as a parody of religion, missing the point that the complaints were about the sexism and not the religious satire (RMS also believes in legalizing pedophilia and possession of child pornography--probably not the most palatable spokesperson to get behind in the first place).

If you're a man who rarely hangs out with women, it's easy to forget what it's like for the other side, especially if they're in a field in which they're practically outsiders. Women didn't take too kindly to being singled out like that at a tech conference. The bigger problem is the backlash from male techies that always flares up when this issue is discussed, which was amplified in the case of RMS because his core supporters tend to be so rabid.

I'm subscribed to the Cocoa-dev mailing list, and one of the regular members there began submitting messages under her real name, revealing that she had previously been posting under a male name because they found that they got more direct responses and less obnoxious comments. And this is Apple platform development, where you might assume the more liberal elements of that particular demographic would lend itself to increased tolerance.

I really can't imagine what it must be like to be a female developer and hope some of them voice their opinions here.

Personal data storage locker. Currently vapour->alpha. Looks interesting and sensible though.

with bug fixes by Ubuntu devs (which get backported to Debian), some cooler packaging, and a better driver selection. I thought everyone in the Linux scene who's been around for any significant length of time knew this.. For more details, read Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable.

I would say that Debian has a certain importance to the Ubuntu community, given that if Debian disappeared, the Ubuntu community would have to whip up all these cool new packages from scratch rather than fixing what's broken from unstable and adding non-free drivers and cool packaging. If Debian disappeared from the face of the earth today, Natty might come out on time... but with luck, its successor might come out in 2 or 3 years. Or maybe Canonical goes bankrupt and it never comes out at all.

I switched from Debian Lenny because of the better driver (as in non-free) selection in Ubuntu, I had to get my new motherboard running immediately.

I think Ubuntu (I use Kubuntu Meerkat) is a better desktop distro, it was intended for ease of use, which is important for most people who make a living with computers in an office environment and pretty much succeeds. If I were going to run a server, I'd put Debian Stable or Testing on it.

Those links are too unreadable.

I clicked those links, plus some from a higher-up post, and found some mentions of bad behaviour, but it's mixed in with long comments about other stuff I've no interest in. To present information in a readable way, I suggest making one page/post about this one topic, and write a statement, link to a proof for that statement, then write another statement, link to a proof for that statement, rince, repeat as necessary.

When it's written, reread it from the point of view of someone who's doubtful (not an enemy, just a critical visitor), and fix the points where you think that reader might stop reading.

How can someone differentiate between your tl;dr links and this:
http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/07/13/backlash-feminism-considered-harmful/#comment-1146
?

Lefty has written heinously sexist troll articles for the notorious troll site encyclopediadramatica.com.

Mod this crap down.

Lefty called bullshit on that personally, read

http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2009/07/13/backlash-feminism-considered-harmful/#comment-1146