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Named Innovators/Developers of Color?
i_c_andrade asks: "Apple and other tech companies were in the past called to task for the lack of Hispanics and African-American's on their Board of Directors, so after doing some research I came to the conclusion that I just did not know a lot of named IT/OSS/Web/CS innovators/developers that were not white (or American) specifically Hispanic or African-American. The first (and only) name that I could think of was Miguel de Icaza, and well I can only blame my own ignorance for not knowing any more, or are there? I know there is a big BSD movement in Brazil (they created the The FreeBSD LiveCD Project; but where else are there developers 'of color' and what are they working on?"
I have sort of a pinkish tan hue.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I haven't seen anyone "of color" in the entire computer science program at any of the three colleges that I've been at, except for four Indians, but they obviously aren't black/hispanic.
Maybe they aren't represented in the industry because they aren't entering the industry in significant numbers, but I may have just been at three colleges that were unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Marcelo Tosatti, who's the maintainer the 2.4, has lived in Brazil his whole life.
Interview and pic can be found here.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Does it really matter who (in the sense of ethnic diversity) writes the OSS code or makes a important innovation? The only thing that should matter (at least thats my opinion) is what they did (ie the result of their work). I wouldn't even care if the creator of my next email application is white/black/yellow/blue, I only care about the quality of their work. And I think if they do a good job they should be proud of themselves, because they did a good job and not because they did a good job and they were [enter whatever color you want].
Everyone on here looks like black text on a white background to me.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
Don't forget the albinos.
Since when is white/biege/tan not a color?
If you mean non-white people or specifically black people, then why not just say so and cut the information-killing politically correct lingo "of color"?
In an online world like development, especially open source, color is a question thats outdated. I have no idea what color someone I read on a miling list, IRC, email, or slashdot is. I don't particularly care. He has good ideas, I'll listen to his advice in the future.
Same at work- I know my teammates, but for other groups unless their names are a giveaway I don't know if he's white, black, purple, polka-dot, or the flying spaghetti monster. I don't really care either- I'm paid to deal with them, thats all I need to know.
The better question is- more than a century after the end of slavery, 50 years after segregation ended, why do people still ask this? Who cares what color your hero is? He's your hero, thats enough. It seems to me that the biggeswt problem in race relations these days isn't the white man looking gown on the black, its the minorities who keep seeing themselves as different, with questions like this.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
http://www.plusthree.com/ - president is Hispanic, another one of the five partners (and a lead developer) is Alaskan Native. Plus Three has been around for over 3 years now, making us one of the old timers for Open Source.
Do you really care if they're "of color", gay, jewish, albino, are incontinent, fear showers, or smell like alabama truckstop?
I want software that works. Licensing is secondary; color of the developers isn't even a factor.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Then after clicking a few links, I found Fernando Magariños, Ramón Morales López, and Mauricio Hernandez.
I'm sure there are countless others...
SEO Firefox Extension
If I do not count students from other nations, I cannot honestly remember anyone other than white guys (we prefer the term Cracker-American) in any of my CompSci or EE classes. Seriously, I can only think if a couple of girls as well. I did go to school in South Dakota...
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Why does it matter? I thought we were supposed to be racially unbiased and "color blind" these days. We're also supposed to be gender unbiased. Why do you care if the person who develops your FOSS is white, black, Chinese, Mexican, Portugese, Canadian, whatever? As long as it works...
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
I think you're gonna find just a low concentration of minorities in tech, period. A sad number of blacks and hispanics still don't get a decent education, and live in environments that aren't suited to independent development of the necessary skills. On top of which, many of those that _do_ develop the skills are going to be more concerned with putting food on the table than doing FOSS work that usually results in little or no actual pay. When you start subtracting the percentages from the percentages, you end up with pretty low estimates in general.
That said, for Americans, it can be hard to reliably tell much about someone's ethnicity by their name, especially for African-Americans, whose names are often just plain ol' Western names if their families weren't post-slavery immigrants. So just because a person's name doesn't sound "ethnic" doesn't mean they're white. On the 'net, there's no way to know what colour someone's skin is.
If you're looking for non-American people, I would recommend reasking the question in terms of citizenship or nationality. Then again, there are a lot of people with plurality there too.
Speak truth to power.
Let me tell you something, coming from the perspective of struggling Latino programmer trying to make it in the United States: It's really easy for you as a white person to say that color doesn't matter, because the peoples you are dealing with have already crossed the finish line and are living it up with you in your high-paid, low-work environment. Do you ever stop and to wonder about the peoples who did not cross the finish line? About those running the race with rocks in their pockets?
Here's a taste of some reality: In the United States, blacks and hispanics have less good home life, less good schools, less good treatment by the government, less wealth, less college education. Just because you think you do not personally discriminate does not mean that your color of your skin isn't important to ending up being a big star in the computer field.
Don't tell me that color does not matter.
Keep your ugly racial stereotypes off my free open source software.
The name "Gerusami Sarathi" springs immediately to mind. He may not be of the specific ethnicities you listed, though. (In fact, his name sounds rather Hindustani to my ear, though I don't actually know).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I haven't seen anyone "of color" in the entire computer science program at any of the three colleges that I've been at...
Don't go holding your breath:
And I had worked so hard to earn all that good Karma.Sigh...
Remember, if there's any shortage of any group somewhere, it's because of discrimination. (Unless it's a shortage of white people, then it's okay.) It's not due to any inherent differences in the given groups, because all people everywhere are all exactly the same!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Basically because I get tired of seeing in Hispanic Business or other minority based trade magazines a total lack of innovators, they focus on COO's or some VP of finance. I tried to think of oh I dont know good role models for non-white kids to have when it comes to the tech world. My CS department and college graduate the 2nd highest number of hispanics in the US, and its just hard to think of people (due to well just know knowing of any) that I can point out to people and say "see they are a great [developer/innovator/developer] that you can use for a role model". Females have Admiral Hopper and Lady Babbige; who can minorities look to?
LOL! You really want to know about people with dark skin, right? You don't care if they are of African descent (more recently than the rest of us), or if they are American, or if they are African-Americans with light skin tones. You're looking for a chocolate-colored role model, regardless of anscestry or nationality.
:)
My girlfriend told me a story about a trip she took to Europe. Trying to point out a black man on the subway that she thought was attractive, she tried describing him (in German) to her friend by his outfit and failed. In her political-correctness, she first tried to avoid mentioning his skin-color, which would've been the obvious and easy way, then tried to translate into German...
"Der Afrikan-Americanisch"
She got a totally blank stare.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
So long as you can get ACPI working on laptops I don't care if you're black, white, brown, yellow, green or pink with yellow spots. Just get it fixed, OK?
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Hiram Chirino is Cuban-American and has been pretty active in Java-based enterprise open source projects.
This "ask slashdot" story is racist on itself. It would've been racist even the policaly correct term du jour (like "non anglo-saxon" or whatever) were used insted of the very racist "of color". Making a compleatly unfounded statistic remark about racial participation in "IT/OSS/Web/CS" projects is calling for more uninformed bable and flames.
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
Ok, this is slightly off-topic, but you aren't the guy responsible for UNICEF Bombing the Smurfs, are you?
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
No reason to care about details such as race, religion, etc. On the net, I'm just interested in opinions and code, but people posting here (or on USENET, or on blog sites, or on any other online forum I can think of) could have three arms and a prehensile forehead for all I care...
:-)
Oh -- I do hate militant Packers fans, though. And Braves fans, but they got theirs (again) so it doesn't matter.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
After all, if open-source had any developers of colour, the GIMP would have CMYK support by now.
No quite in the IT/OSS/Web/CS category, but still technology, I've always been very impressed with the work of Bell Labs' James West, best known for his work with microphones.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My skin color is (RGB) #d2b48c - "Tan"; likely due to the Shawnee tribe my family married into a few generations back. Does that count?
Admittedly, after October it fades to (RGB) #f0f8ff - "Antique White", but that's because I'm no longer wearing t-shirts outside.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. this, like everything else, is not a binary choice. sometimes it's a little tiny bit of latent discrimination that makes the difference. sometimes it's outright bigotry. and sometimes, yes, it's someone with a victimization complex. there are at least as many forms of discrimination as there are skin colors, and i'd include odd skin conditions in the count.
but don't throw out the reality of discrimination along with the false allegations. and don't throw out the allegations until you have a damn good reason - the present is inseperable from the past. if you've had a deep long term relationship of any kind you know that's true.
I hear Windows has some pretty colors. Red, yellow, green, and blue... and they're organized into a neat little pattern. Problem is that that's the only part that works; the rest is just plain blue. I can never see Apple's colors because the products are always so frackin' shiny. The glare is just too much to handle. Linux has colors, too, from what I understand, but my framebuffer broke long ago, and all I see now is black and white at 80x32.
I can still compute on all those platforms. Their color really isn't an issue.
Informatus Technologicus
Look, I am Paraguayan (from South America). My native language is Spanish, and also I speak some Guaraní. My family does not have any special 'ethnic background'. I have written a number of articles for the U.S. online tech press, and I use GNU/Linux daily as my sole operating system. I also help in the KDE-ES Spanish translation effort (heck, that Subversion transition was a dog).
With all that said, let me state that I think that this story is preposterous and reeks of utter political correctness. I find stories such as this an insult to my intelligence and my abilities. I do not care about anyone's race. Do not show me the color of your skin, or the language you speak, or the culture that forms your framework of reference. Show me your code; show me your contribution to the cause of Free Software. This is going to be my mark of respect.
I don't need that affirmative action bovine crap. I need substantial efforts to see GNU/Linux or other Free operating system powering the world's desktops because of its superior quality and its freedom.
Bueno, por lo menos esto es lo que pienso; disculpen si por escribir en inglés nunca se imaginaron que soy sudamericano. No necesito de la basura de la mal llamada affirmative action y la sola sugerencia de dicha medida me es algo insultante. Gracias por todo.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
Derek Smart is a developer, and he's certainly famous in his own way.
No, he's right. The original poster indeed has some sort of chip on his shoulder. It's that chip which prevents him from seeing that it's the fact that he can't write two coherent sentences in one shot which keeps him struggling. It's not "the man" keeping him down, it's that he writes like a semi-literate imbecile.
He may in fact have been the victim of discrimination at some point, but that is, IMO, completely orthogonal to the issue of him not being the high-paying career man he feels he deserves to be.
Anyway, that just my opinion.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I say it's just non-sensical. I don't know anyone who doesn't reflect visible light.
.. that person I helped out on experts-exchange last week typed like he was sat in a very dark room ... does that count?
Though hang-on
Incidentally, poverty, which seems rife in many areas populated by people with dark skin colour (i.e. hot places!) is a great incentive towards innovation. I'd imagine there's more innovation where a living is harder to come by (polar/ equatorial).
I've always wondered why they started using the term disabled vs the term handicapped. Found that very weird when they switched.
I thought handicapped was a much better term. Especially nowadays in the computer age, disabling something means totally turning it off. Whereas if you're handicapped it just means you are disadvantaged in some way.
In golf, handicapping can be used to let people play the game on reasonably even terms.
Not all of us white folk are swimming in the money either. I have real world programming experience, a BS, and yet I serve 411 to people.
Reading this thread is interesting. Most minorities posters are seemingly frustrated for no reason about this topic. This is specifically to you who come across this. I'm an African-American male and I also experience racism and discrimination everyday. Just recently I was stopped over the Brooklyn Bridge for no other reason than my skin color. In Dec of 94 I started using free software exclusively. Currently, I work for a server company, most of my time is spent screwing around the kernel/selinux and distribution related crap.
I learned all I needed to learn the day I realized I could make anything that I wanted to with the tools provided to me. That day, sometime in Dec of 94 (my age 13-14 or so) I realized that worrying about discrimination and racism was unimportant in this arena. I had the tools necessary to do whatever I wanted while also be compensated for it. Also realize that the world is much bigger than the USA which is largely the most racist. (I've also traveled a bit) You'll find racism and discrimination elsewhere but your software has no color and will be warmly accepted by the people who need it; once it fits their needs.
The racist and discriminatory persons should be of no matter or recourse to you. Ignore them for the most part when it comes to matters like this. Concentrating your efforts on your work are more important and will produce better results. I'm sure some racist and discriminatory people benefit from some of my opensource work everyday. What are you going to do? I see it as a win; win all around. People are entitled to their views and opinions. I'm not racist and discriminatory and I'll fight it where it makes sense. Here's not one of the places it makes sense.
My views for everyone else are that there are less minorities in computing because the initial cost of computers were prohibitive for most. That combined with social stigmas, general disdain towards said groups and lack to equipment made it extremely difficult. I'm only lucky in the aspect that at the time my parents are what one would deem upper middle class and could afford to purchase me a Fountain PC 80286 with 5 1/4 floppy. As of current, its primarily an education problem but with free distributions and word of mouth I expect to see more minorities entering the arena in the next decade. Especially in their own countries.
As much as i'd love to regulate this argument to being primarily a class issue (which would at least be better than what it actually is). That isn't fair. The class issue is part and parcel because of the race issue. A majority of poor which is considered "class" are also black/hispanic. They are poor because a majority of the wealthy are white who then predicate discriminatory and racist behavior.
Free software changes all of this though. Minorities or people who feel oppressed economically now have all the tools needed in modern day to change that. No longer does one need to feel dependent on anything other than their capabilities and imagination to survive.
So you can complain, or you can get a copy of binutils, glibc and gcc and get to work. It's not easy and nothing ever is. There will be days you wish gdb actually fucking worked and good days. Whatever the case; use your mind and creative talents to change the world.
You'll find that the people who are really good at what they do don't care what your skin color is and if they do. You're better.
As for naming inventors. Lewis Latimer was a black scientist that created the electric lightbulb and the first air conditioner. Worked with Edison. The house he did all of his work in was recently moved to Queens. Interesting fellow and i'm lucky enough to have met the person involved for a majority of this. I even got to see his original patents. GE donated to the restoration and we held the opening ceremony last year. All in all it was a fun ceremony and it inspired me even further.
Got this from an email forward couple of days ago... :)
Dear White fella............
When I born, I Black,
When I grow up, I Black,
When I go in Sun, I Black,
When I scared, I Black,
When I sick, I Black,
And when I die, I still black.
And you White fella...
When you born, you Pink,
When you grow up, you White,
When you go in Sun, you Red,
When you cold, you Blue,
When you scared, you Yellow,
When you sick, you Green,
And when you die, you Gray..
And you calling me Colored?
Richard D. Parsons, Chairman and CEO of Time Warner
I find the reverse (ha!) is true for me. I've spend a long time looking at white/yellow/amber/etc. text on a black background, and I always find that harder on my eyes. Maybe it's because your eyes focus on the background, and black is hard to focus on, or the darkness causes your iris to dilate too far to focus properly, or something. Whatever the reason, I find dark text on a light background easier; black on white is fine, as long as the brightness isn't turned up too far. People seem perfectly happy to read stuff on paper using black on white, after all, so it ought to work reasonably well on screen too.
But then, my preferences are often a bit unusual. I actually prefer anti-aliased text; I find sans-serif fonts easier to read, even (especially) for body text; and I prefer proportional fonts even for source code. All of these seem to go against the grain around here, but none are on principle or being awkward -- I do find text easier to read that way.
I guess the lesson here is that People Are Different. There's too much of the I-am-the-world argument used in amateur UI design (and elsewhere).
Still, I fully agree with your final point that too much visual excitement is painful. Subtlety and elegance are the things to aim for!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
The dude behind the Big Mac 'System X' Cluster
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
There are "developers of color" all over the world. Look at India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Russia...
Just because there aren't many "African-Americans" or "Hispanics" in the United States that develop code doesn't mean there aren't any elsewhere in the world. The number of "white" (read: Anglo-Saxon) coders in the nations I've mentioned is probably a similarly small percentage as "colored" coders in the US.
Everyone should travel to a foreign land at least once in a lifetime. It's the only way to gain a true understanding and appreciation for other cultures.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/edison/ lightbulb.shtml
he first electric light was made in 1800 by Humphry Davy, an English scientist. He experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light. This is called an electric arc.
Much later, in 1860, the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) was determined to devise a practical, long-lasting electric light. He found that a carbon paper filament worked well, but burned up quickly. In 1878, he demonstrated his new electric lamps in Newcastle, England.
In 1877, the American Charles Francis Brush manufactured some carbon arcs to light a public square in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. These arcs were used on a few streets, in a few large office buildings, and even some stores. Electric lights were only used by a few people.
The inventor Thomas Alva Edison (in the USA) experimented with thousands of different filaments to find just the right materials to glow well and be long-lasting. In 1879, Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed but did not burn up for 40 hours. Edison eventually produced a bulb that could glow for over 1500 hours.
Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) improved the bulb by inventing a carbon filament (patented in 1881); Latimer was a member of Edison's research team, which was called "Edison's Pioneers." In 1882, Latimer developed and patented a method of manufacturing his carbon filaments.
In 1903, Willis R. Whitney invented a treatment for the filament so that it wouldn't darken the inside of the bulb as it glowed. In 1910, William David Coolidge (1873-1975) invented a tungsten filament which lasted even longer than the older filaments. The incandescent bulb revolutionized the world.
If we assume that statiscally blacks are more likely to: come from single parent families, live in crime ridden neighborhoods, attend underperforming and underfunded schools, be harassed and ill-treated by the judicial system, be poor; and less likely to complete college -
Why are these things true? Because the culture is racist? Perhaps it is.
Perhaps it is more than that.
The Journal of Negro Education printed an article on success of African Americans from families where there was considerable parental involvement and found that these children attained higher levels of success than other African Americans.
I concur that we should work to make schools better - for all students. If we are serious about societal improvement, we must make families better and stronger, because they are the foundation on which individuals stand when learning to overcome obstacles in life.
The downstram effect of limited parenting, poor role models, and poor primary and secondary education means that people who are selected from that group on the basis of race alone are ill equipped to perform competetively with those who have the advantages from the beginning.
It's a multifaceted problem which will require a multifaceted solution. I get frustrated when people want to put window dressing on and call it a solution.
In the US we are in denial about the societal effect of divorce and single-parent households. We are only now beginning to reap the rewards of the sexual revolution - how many kids go home to single-parent houses? How many kids get home alone for a couple of hours in the afternoon?
I submit that if we could teach people with all amounts of melanin in their skin in our culture how to be successfully married, and how to teach children to value themselves and others, we would revolutionize the US - in less than one generation!
Instead we seek to glorify the ethic of the individual - that self pleasure is all that matters and we must do whatever it takes to 'be happy.' And then continue in our denial by railing against the system, and bias.
"The system" (whatever that is) and bias may discriminate against people of color. It probably does. But it can be overcome. We should teach people about success rather than to live as victims of 'the man.'
Just my $0.25 (sorry for the long and wandering rant on social policy)
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I apologize for posting so late to this thread and running the risk that no one may see it (which may be a good thing), but after reading many of the replies, I wanted to address why the original question matters. For the purposes of full disclosure (or of opening myself up to various darts and arrows), I am an African-American with 20+ years of computer industry experience. Why does that matter? Not much, except to say (a) I've been in the industry for a while, (b) I've been around for a while and may see things differently (not necessarily better than others, but differently) and (c) I have had to address questions like this many times over the years (so hopefully, I've thought through it and may be able to shed some insight).
:-)). Whether we like it or not (and maybe many of us do because we are in the computer industry), computer science is one of those fields perceived as "intellectually difficult." So, only smart people work with computers. Then, the logical conclusion would be that some groups are not smart enough to work computers. Yes, there are a few exceptions, but the argument would talk about the general rule instead of the exceptions.
From a (hopefully) logical perspective, I see at least the following possibilities why a group (e.g., Hispanics/African-Americans/pick your own) may not be represented in a particular field:
1. The group is not interested in the field for personal reasons:
This addresses the issue where a poster mentioned Jews in basketball vs. African-Americans in basketball. If you grow up in an area where many of your friends play a particular sport, then you may also play that sport. Or to be more on point, if someone is not interested in the field because they are interested in something else, then no problem. We are all free to choose what we like to do.
2. The group may be too small statistically:
This addresses the issue where posters mention the person who is green/left-handed/name begins with a Z type of issue. There may be a question of (a) how do you identify such people if the data is not even collected for their category and (b) there may not be enough of these people to fall into every bucket (i.e., industry positions in this case). Again, there is no problem with this reason. Or more importantly, it trivializes the real issue by bringing up extreme cases.
3. The group is actively discouraged from participating in the field
This is an interesting one because the questions are, "Why are they being discouraged?" and "What's the proof that they are being discouraged?" Since I think it is related to the next item, which has much more data points, I will not spend to much time on this.
4. The group is incapable of participating in the field
This is the biggie in my mind that addresses the issue of "Why is it important to answer the original question." By incapable, I am addressing the issue of intelligence (get your flamethrowers ready
As some of you may know, the history of intelligence-related research in the United States has always had a tinge of racism to it (to put it mildly). It is convenient, and incorrect, to look upon incidents such as the publishing of "The Bell Curve" (by Murray and Hernstein in 1994) as anomalies that we should just ignore. For those of you not familiar with the book, one of the findings is that African-Americans are genetically inferior in intellectual capabilities.
These types of assertions are not new. You can do quick searches to look up all kinds of interesting items such as Nobel-prize winning scientist, William Shockley (who I think help invented the transistor while at Bell Labs), spent much of his later career presenting his findings that basically echoed "The Bell Curve." As a few side notes:
(a) I witnessed Shockley on a news program many years ago presenting his findings. He died in 1989 and I watched a replay of this broadcast around 12 years ago. So, this was not a new phenomenon.
(b) To go back further, you can look online
informative and clarifying
Being racist is an attitude. Using the wrong term-of-the-day doesn't make you racist. Not knowing people doesn't make you racist. It might make you out of touch, or ignorant, or it might be because in a global medium, you can't ever avoid pissing off everybody. The poster meant well, so instead of overreacting, try to help.
For the record, he referred to a very "founded" statistical remark. He was talking about how few non-white he -personally- knew, probably something he knows more about than you. Moreover, he said that he "could only blame his own ignorance".
If I thought you were a troll I wouldn't bother replying, but I think you just responded blindly.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
under point b) make that "your dumbasses". I didn't want to imply all amercians were such :-P
It's important different cultures are always important, I want to see more influences from Latin America and Asia. Not just the people you see on mailing lists but the ones who don't speak english and hack anyways. I believe that it's great that there will be some fresh blood in the relative monocuture Comp.Sci scene. Hence it would be nice to know who they are.