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Fedora Welcomes Women to FOSS
nman64 writes "The Fedora Project, the project behind the Fedora Core Linux distribution, has introduced Fedora Women, a program to reach out to women who are interested in using and contributing to Fedora Core. This follows in the footsteps of LinuxChix, Debian Women, and Ubuntu Women and is part of a larger trend to support women in the FOSS world. At present, women are believed to make up only about 1.5% of the FOSS community. Is that finally set to change?"
This thread is useless without pics.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Why exactly do they need a set of nude photos?
What is this woman that they speak about?
Why do you encourage or even force them? Let them decide naturally what they want to do. Women don't force use men to breast-feed either. Respect people's natural inclinations and interests.
There are in fact a number of female kernel developers. They tend to go by their initials rather than revealing their first names. There is no bias if people can't even tell.
Not that it should matter! If they like being developers, cool. If not, oh well.
There is also Andrea, who is male. It's an Italian thing, OK?
Why on Earth is this needed? I'm all for equal opportunities and everything, but does further segregation of the sexes help any cause?
Some things are always going to be *generally* one sex or the other. For example, men like mechanics and sports. Women like ponies and getting their nails done. Obviously not hard and fast examples.
Men like to be nerds, women like to be in the real world more.
That's a really nice insensitive. I would sure wish that more women were involved in computing, and actually interested by it. Almost 80% of the woman I met use the computer just for chatting to their friends through instant messenging.
Having a woman's touch on a software would be really great. I sure hope this project is a success and brings some great woman into OSS.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
** where "free chocolate" is a matter of liberty, not price.
Having been in university for about 4 years, from observation, the number of women in CIS classes is usually about 2/50, 4%. (Except for the first year CIS classes that are mandatory for science students). Officially, the CIS department here is concerned since only 3.7% of the people graduating from the CIS program are women. Of the women in the department I know, (and I know most of them, it's not hard to when there are so few) there's only one of them that might be interested in working on an open source program. And these numbers come from a university that overall has one of the highest percentage of women enrolled in Canada (University of Guelph). It's almost all female in this university, when men are required for surveys CIS classes are specially targetted for participants.
Given these figures, I really doubt that any shortage of women is due to sexism in FOSS projects... From what I can see, most people working in FOSS projects are generally fairly liberal anyways and accepting of women.
Josh
Open Your Mind. Open Your Source.
I'd like to think that more women will become involved with FOSS, although I'm not sure how exactly that will happen. There is still a huge gap in the numbers of men and women in CS programs, and there are other cultural factors, especially in the teenage years, that pressure females to not engage in "nerdy" activities like programming (which is seen to be asocial, even though FOSS development is quite social).
/.ing, nothing. That does not mean it's true of all females, but even if a majority of female programmers are like this (which it seems to be), that's a huge chunk out of an already tiny share. Combine this with the fact that working women are still (somehow) expected by their husbands to do more of the housework and childcare... yeah I'm not so optimistic.
On a more contraversial note, it seems to me that a lot of FOSS is driven by a very... male... obsessiveness. It is the experience of myself and my collegues that female programmers tend not to be "computer geeks," in the sense that when 5:00 rolls around, they are done programming for the day - no hobby coding, no
Of course I, for one, would welcome our new female FOSS overlords, but I think that's probably a long way off.
The underlying assumption of programs such as this is that women are too insecure or too intimidated to do something they want to do unless somebody sets up a program to cajole thing into feeling comfortable. That's nuts. Women do whatever they happen to enjoy -- as individuals -- and men do the same. Some people just can't get over the fact that vastly more men than women want to develop software (or create hardware or whatever). Why is this so threatening to them? Because it goes against their deep-seated belief that everyone is born identical and it's only culture that makes us want different things. That's bull and it's always been bull. Men and women are different in some key ways -- on AVERAGE. There are some very brilliant women who care deeply about IT work, but the vast majority don't. That's not going to change, even for the ones who are plenty bright enough to do it.
If you think you need to set up programs to beg certain segments of the population that other people do because it's fun and exciting and rewarding to them, you're out of touch with reality about what makes people tick. Let the people who WANT to do technical work do it, whether they're men, women, black, white, pink or purple. It's about individual choice, not about counting numbers of certain groups.
David
Women are less skilled, less talented and thus should be helped and encouraged to participate in FOSS...
But if they are maybe it's not a good idea to do thay...
And if they're not then why the need for affirmative action?
Every discrimination is stupid.
\u262D = \u5350
I don't understand why we should PUSH to get women into FOSS or anywhere else in the world of IT. Not that I care... I mean, they are welcome but, isn't this the kind of thing you do just because you want to ? I never saw an urge to get boys interested in Barbie, did you ? Do we really NEED women that much in here ?
(Sigh..)
Women are working on stuff? Holy cow!
Am I the only one sick of this kind of 'news'?
This just in: two more female workers signed up for oil drilling, bringing the total population of female oil drillers to 4, of the total population of 20,000
Why does it matter what sex they are? The reason this is 'news' is because people want to hear stories about how women are being treated equally in the workplace. Women's rights are always easy news. You say, "Women have lagged behind men in [insert job] but are catching up thanks to [insert bullshit here]" and you sell newspapers/ad-space/FreeIPodsAndViagra.
If you single out women for working in a specific job for no reason other than 'they're women' you aren't treating them as equals to men. You're treating them like freaks, like a sideshow.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
For FOSS women over 50, there is always the Red Hat Soceity. (That's the Cheery Red Tomatoes for you Simpsons fans) Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Seriously though, shouldn't Fedora contact them? At the very least they can cross promote each other.
Why are they actively reaching out to women? They don't actively reach out to men (specifically). If women want to do it, they will come. If they don't, they won't. They are wasting their time, because nobody new will help because of this reaching out campaign. Not being sexist, but most women probably don't think that cutting code is cool, and care too much about society. Us nerds don't care if other people call us recluse, geeks, nerds, whatever. We know we make a difference. I guess women don't feel that way, and need to be acknowledged.
Damn. I just re-read that post and it sounded incredibly rude. Well, I don't mean to be, so sorry if I offend anyone. I can't think of a better way to say it.
Disclaimer: IANAP (psychiatrist)
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
On a more contraversial note, it seems to me that a lot of FOSS is driven by a very... male... obsessiveness. It is the experience of myself and my collegues that female programmers tend not to be "computer geeks," in the sense that when 5:00 rolls around, they are done programming for the day - no hobby coding, no
Of course I, for one, would welcome our new female FOSS overlords, but I think that's probably a long way off.
I can see why you have a Cornell.edu address. You are fucking brilliant. Your post is one the most most brilliant attempts at Karma Whoring I have EVER seen! You go all PC (suporting women, F/OSS(which is PC on /.))!
Fucking Brilliant! You Madam or Sir WILL be extremely succesful! And I'm a pathetic loser who's jealous.
A pink desktop background and the cigarette lighter has been replaced by a lipstick holder.
the guys just want a date
I spend most of my time in bed, darling.
OK, I'll bring it up again: most people who've been in a technical field for awhile notice that a much greater percentage of women from Asia and Eastern Europe (including Russia) seem to be interested in a career in science and engineering, following a technical track (i.e., not a manager, marketer, or doc writer), compared with American women for example. Why is that? Socialization undoubtedly accounts for some of it, but I'm not sure there's not a genetic basis as well.
People like to do what they're good at relative to their fellow workers.
Yes, I think it would coincide with the year of the Linux desktop
At present, women are believed to make up only about 1.5% of the FOSS community. Is that finally set to change?
As long as you keep creating special "women" foundations, this isn't going to change. Women are people just like us, why can't they be in the current foundations along men treated equally?
You don't see a "Fedora Men" foundation.
This is stupid.
Face it, women are less attracted to IT than men, just like men are less attracted to fashion decoration than women.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Unlike some other fields, women aren't being kept out of programming through any sort of imposed discrimination. Anyone can learn to program and anyone who writes good code can participate, especially in FOSS. I've known female coders for more than 20 years, from the COBOL whiz when I was a sysop at the Department of $US_DEPT to a few people in my department at $MegaCorp today. Yes, they're a minority, but only out of choice. No one is telling women not to code. Code doesn't have genitalia. As long as it works who gives a rat's ass whether code was written by a man or a woman or even by Hugo the Incredible Coding Marmoset?
Only Debian seems to be on the right track here. The pages needs to be excessively pink! However even debian lacks the ponies. And possibly red hearts and roses...
Because we all know that's what attracts women! *_*
The numbers aren't going to change easily. Not as long as the FOSS world is dominated by men (and yes, this is where the snake bites its own tail).
/. - very male communication patterns, enough to make it tricky at times to know whether to be insulted or not or whether to take something the way it is written or with a grain of salt. Women will often think more and also interpret communications in very different ways at times. So when being into FOSS means 1) getting into a stereotypically male area of interest and b) interacting with almost only men who on occasion seem to speak another language, I have to applaud those 1.5% for sheer guts.
One example: my university classes used to overlap with those of CIS students a lot, and what I heard from the few female students there was that they found it hard to communicate with the men at times and often didn't really want to. Simply take a look at
OMG!!!!its ponies!
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I asked a work collegue 'why most women don't have hobbies?' She gave an answer I have heard many times - 'Woman don't need hobbies, we can create with our bodies. Men have hobbies to make up for their inability to give birth.' Then I stated 'But then why do any women have hobbies at all?' The answer stunned me 'Because they are barren, old, or gay.' So apparently, Open Source runs on testosterone. Never think women are more enlightened than men - they just disguise their stupidity better. ;-)
Here we go again, for yet another round of "I'm a guy, and I don't understand why this is needed" responses to one of these articles. Yeah, you're all right, the reason there aren't many women programmers is that women don't want to program or aren't suited to it. They also don't want higher education, and they don't want to work outside the home, and they don't want to vote, and they don't want to drive. And yes, they'd all love to post pictures of their boobies for you, if they only knew how to work these funny machines.
Is that finally set to change?
Certainly not because Fedora thought it's time they jumped into the line. Generally I guess the number (around 2 percent) is just about right. Although during my university years, that is from ~4 to 9 years back, in IT this number at us was much higher, you can hardly meet women actually working for their living in the field.
While I also - like others above - don't really think such "separation" of women related to linux is generally good, it might help some newbies to get involved by alleviating the fear that there are no other women involved, and that's good. Other than that, I'd guess it's pretty useless. But hopefully a girl will come around and tell us otherwise.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I now of one way to get a lot more female linux users... being able to play the Sims2. My gf will switch from xp the same day that happens (without knowing about it for the first few months).
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
the real question is why aren't you willing to provide them?
I'm looking at the comments so far and they seem to be broken up into two groups:
Hasn't anyone ever thought that these two viewpoints might be related? That maybe the reason more women don't go into tech is cultural - not in the "women are more interested in nail polish than hard drives"-sort of way, but in the sense that they sick and tired of dealing with all the "oohh, titties!" comments that we men think is good natured humor, but gets old with women? Maybe, just maybe, if women (or minorities or the handicapped, etc) can be provided with a supportive environment, we'll find that women are interested in tech. Maybe we'll even find that some women can be really good at it.
Let me put it another way. Everyone once in a while, a sports-related story pops up on Slashdot, and the comments inevitably drift toward stories of posters who have been pushed around by jocks in high school, so they now have a dim view of sports. Like us men making "titties" jokes, jocks would consider their messing with geeks to be good-natured humor. Imagine for a second that your exposure to sports came in a supportive environment (think affirmative action for geeks)- is it possible that this might have resulted in a more positive outlook towards athletics (especially sports like American football and basketball that involves a high degree of strategy as well as athletic talent)?
It's not a matter of discrimination or taking something away from men. It's all about providing a supportive environment so that women can concentrate on the matter at hand, rather than dealing with all the 'good natured' 'non-PC' crap that men throw at them.
Inclination doesn't mean lack of talent. That only follows if you think the only talented people do IT.
If someone doesn't generally desire to do something, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily bad at it.
Now, apptitude and enjoyment often go hand in hand. But not always.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Because Linux is for FAGS. Gay women are called Dykes. Non-Linux OSS are small so there is a small number of heterosexual women involved in OSS.
Go shove that up your ass, Linus.
Thank you for brilliantly illustrating why programs like this are sorely needed.
FEDORA: Would you like to... I don't know... maybe kinda... do something together sometime?
BABE: Get lost geek.
FEDORA: *retreats to parent's basement to continue work on Laura Croft robot*
in programming jobs and then someone please explain why there should be more women than that in FOSS. Politcally correct software, they got to be kidding.
I noticed the two stories on the page next to each other. Coincidence?
Which would wipe out half of FOSS in one fell swoop. But the ranks would quickly be re-filled with normal people with actual technical and social skills. What to do with all those leftover dorks? Not to worry, they'll have more time to do what they really want, which is spend more time posting asinine comments on Digg and Slashdot.
we will end no whine before its time
Maybe women stay away from "nerds" on the internet for the fear of being hounded to death by people who have never seen a woman online before.
typical conversation
*Christine has entered the channel
randomperson > OMG!!! R joo @ girl????
randomperson 2 > OMG!!!!111 GIRLS!!!
Christine > ah yeah.
randomperson3 > OMG randomhotmail@hotmail.com send nude pics!!111
randomperson > Y@ s3nd nudie pics plz.
*Christine has left the channel
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
The impact of women on FOSS is tangible already. Every 28 days my FC5 installation gets cranky and won't let me log on.... some message appears that says "You don't love me anymore!!!!" and then the screen goes black. On alternate days it let's me logon, but in order to keep it speedy I have to buy it a diamond.
load "$",8,1
welcome our new Female overlords.
Ever been Overrated and Underrated without being actually rated?
Let's leave the sexual objectification to FreeBSD, shall we?
I think many are missing the point... Giving a group an identity is a sure way to increase the chances, that those who are interested and fit qualifications of the group, will turn out good work. This is backed up by every long standing Military/Governmental/Religous group every in existance. Esprit de corps is very very real... if the male community is upset/threatened/annoyed by this then create a competing "Real Men of Linux" or some such other group.
One almost certian way to increase membership/attention/interest in anything is to create competing groups. Look at college rivalries.
I do not think you can say that all women enjoy working with other women. I have heard several female friends (and relatives) complain that some other women are 'catty'. My mother (a teacher) once told me that she prefers having a male boss (principal) because his moods are more static; with a female principal, she never knows if the female principle might be having a 'bad day'.
Mostly, The individual personalities of one's co-workers can influence a person's working environment far more than individual gender demographics.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
There has been a female-oriented distribution forever.
Check it out
Why does their sex have to be a factor? Or worse, why does it have to be a gimmick or selling point?
Just write code!
Now I can finally wear my chicks dig unix t-shirt and get all the babes.....
Wikileaks, no DNS
Unless someone indicates otherwise, on the internet, we are all gender-anonymous. There could possibly be more women involved in F/OSS than is assumed (none?). The default assumption here, anyway, is that everyone involved is male. Somehow every comment I post with any sort of gender reference is replied to with the assumption that I am male. Last time I checked, I was fairly certain that I was a woman.
Personally, I am detracted from Women-specific IT/programming/OSS/etc groups, if only for the fact that because they exclude men, it is allready a guaranteed smaller base for information. That just does not make sense. There are other factors making me wary of such groups, but after much thought on it, I have not been able to come up with a specific description of what bothers me about it. Most likely it's allready been ingrained in my head that things designated toward women are somehow of a lesser status, or dumbed-down.
Anyway, us women are amongst you, maybe you just have to stop assuming that we are guys.
Why does
--
Safely entrenched into the depths of 'Terrible Karma'.. now I can FINALLY speak my mind..
When girls sucks at something, it's cultural, environmental issue. When boys sucks at something, it's because boys are just stupid.
Yeah right.
Unlike almost every other feld in the world, programming is something anyone who wants to can. There are tons of free books and courses on-line as well as source code, with a whole new source repository opening.
There simply isn't the discrimination you so desperately wish to see in the field of programming, only an overall lack of interest in entering such a field by one sex. As a percentage there are a lot fewer women working as movers. Why not start working on getting the percentage up over there?
I made this point on the fedora forums a few months back when someone made a point of acknowledging some internal women's day or something such thing. By pointing out the differences you only further remind everyone that we are indeed different for pointless reasons.
... what's next? Are they going to start allowing minorities to participate in FOSS!?!
Man, this crap is old. One can hardly wonder why there are so few women around. Try reading what some women have to say about their experiences in computing. But don't expect too many to out themselves here. And don't point out that Spertus's paper is old and things have changed. This thread just demonstrated that it hasn't.
"An EC funded study (2006) summarized in the Flosspols report, indicates that about 1.5% of FLOSS community members were female, compared with 28% in proprietary software."
Comprise graduating Computer Science and Software Engineering classes from universities.
Well, reading the first 182 comments posted here it's pretty clear why women still need dedicated users'/developers' groups. The stereotype humor appears to be alive and well:
- ponies
- pink
- periods
- pedicures
As a woman in IT, I have actually found the majority of men in IT either don't care about women in IT or else are actively interested in broadening diversity in the field. (Mind you, that applies not only to gender but to ethnicity and other criteria as well.) Then there's that minority, the stereotype bitter socially retarded geeks with chips on their shoulders, doomed to eternally relive some perceived rejection from a woman or girl that dates back to elementary school...
To those (whose postings I found so typical of their group) I say, what do you care if there are specialized programs targeted towards women? You are the majority participants, are you really that threatened if a bunch of girlies with sub-par technical skills (as you like to describe them) sit around, do their nails, doodle ponies and contribute to FOSS? I am flabbergasted to imagine how such an activity would have any impact on you whatsoever.
If you are really concerned that the quality of FOSS will somehow decline, may I remind you of the peer review system. Even supposing any of the women's groups were to promote something that was of no use to the larger user/developer base, it would be critically reviewed and sent back for revision or else shot down completely. My point is that it shouldn't be an issue how people arrive at solutions; let them gather, support each other, brainstorm and develop in the forums that suit them best.
Users/developers form specialized groups all the time, whether it be because of their gender, location, belief system or what have you. The news here is not so much the groups -- it's whether the percentage of women in FOSS may be higher than is popularly understood. All the hogwash about women not being interested in IT, not having the innate skills etc. aside, we're here and we're working away on the same projects men do. This may come as a horrible shock, but there are women who excel in the field.
Personally I'm all for it. Let there be women's groups, gay groups, blue collar groups, Hindi groups, what have you. Let people work and network in whatever ways increase the brain trust. It's the results that count.
Science is about what is, not what we believe or hope. -- Dr. Lonnie Thompson, glaciologist, Ohio State University
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't", one might say, but there is, as I wrote before, no barrier to entry of any kind when it comes to women and coding. None. There are no school or college programming classes (in the Western world, anyway) which discourage women from joining. Quite the opposite, in fact. Schools try to recruit women into CS courses to keep certain government departments which mean well off their collective asses.
There is no real "old boy" network preventing women from getting their additions included in the next CVS. It doesn't exist. In the coding world, no one can see your genitalia... only your crappy commenting, piss-poor formatting style and your pathetic attempt to rewrite some library within every iteration of a badly structured loop.
The only time I look at the name of the coder of some piece of software I use is if it doesn't work and I need to find out who to write to.
Note the "is made up of women". That's not talking about getting women to use Fedora. It's talking about women already using Fedora.
It also says:
Note the "contributors". It's not talking about pushing women into contributing. It's talking about women who are already contributing.
It also says:
Note the "who are interested in working with the Fedora Project". It's not talking about pushing women into getting interested in Fedora. It's talking about women who are already interested in contributing.
So this is not the project to get the girls away from their cooking and sewing, haranguing them into instead developing driver patches even though they'd rather be knitting baby booties, that all too many of the responses seem to be treating it as.
I have no concrete ideas how to go about this but feel very strongly about this issue. Any suggestions?
Yeah, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
I've made way too many posts on this article, but the general point is that it's way more important in the long run for women to stop being so offended over any mention of sex than it is for men to stop saying anything offensive. Seriously. It's their problem, not ours.
In fact, that's a way more feminist position to say that women shouldn't be so offended by off-color remarks than saying an overwhelmingly male community (FOSS) should coddle women to make them feel better.
In my field, at work, there are just as many women as men around. I generally don't associate with the women, for the sole reason that I already have a girlfriend, and it's boring talking to other women because they get so offended by my off-color remarks that every guy at work finds hilarious.
In short, the problem isn't that there aren't enough women in whatever. The problem is that women don't appreciate a good fart joke when they hear one.
OMG!! Ponies!!!
Parent post has a good point.
1 6-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf --it's a PDF file). So we want to fix the problem, partially by increase awareness.
If you are crying "Unfair!" about how it's not fair to have compensatory "reverse discrimination" or "affirmative action" because men and women should be on an equal footing, you don't get it.
You can debate about whether this is fair in the job search market, but that's a completely different debate, because that's a zero-sum situation: if a company hires a woman due to "affirmative action", then by definition they have rejected a man applicant. That's not what's happening here.
Women's outreach projects like Fedora Women, LinuxChix, etc. are taking advantage of an untapped population. Drawing more women into the FL/OSS community is *not* a loss for men; in fact, it is a gain for everyone. Why the big uproar?
Now, it so happens that the way in which we realized there was an untapped population was because of the low ratio of women to men, but this is merely an indicator. The goal of these projects is *not* to "fix the ratio", which would have implied that we would be equally happy reducing the number of men. Rather, we use the indicator to tell us where we can focus our outreach efforts. We see that there are reasons why women are being systematically and subconsciously being discriminated against (see the FLOSSPOLS report http://www.flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D
What if we had replaced "women" with some other population with great potential for contribution --say, "non-English-speaking programmers"-- would people complain that the effort to involve all of the international community would be unfair to the English speakers? I can just imagine the outcry:
"There are already some non-English-speaking programmers on one of the Sourceforge projects."
"Why are we trying to get them involved in FL/OSS? That means fewer resources to promote FL/OSS to English speakers!"
"Who's stopping them from learning English? Face it --they're just not interested."
"FL/OSS is doing okay with just English-speakers only. I don't see any problem."
"We shouldn't help them, because they're rude --I emailed them about some bugs in their program, but they never even acknowledged my email."
"Hey! You English no good! Okay? Me teach you program: HELLO WORLD! Yes?"
Guys, let's pull our collective head out of our ass and stop giving knee-jerk reactions just because the Google keywords "affirmative action" showed up somewhere in this threat.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Nothing keeps a minority group in the minority quite like identifying and classifying.
So while we're at it, let's have "Fedora Blacks," "Fedora Orientals," or maybe just lump them together and call them "Fedora Coloreds?"
I don't think it's a good idea, frankly, and for all the same reason that racial identification might seem inappropriate.
(And on a side note regarding political incorrectness, why is the NAACP still called NAACP!? "They" don't want to be called "Colored People" even though 'of color' was the popular term, so why keep the same organizational name?!... I don't get it.)
The stereotype humor appears to be alive and well
Then there's that minority, the stereotype bitter socially retarded geeks with chips on their shoulders, doomed to eternally relive some perceived rejection from a woman or girl that dates back to elementary school...
Wow. Just...wow. You complain about one stereotype, and then use another.
Newsflash: I don't know, nor have I ever heard of, any guys who "eternally relive [sic] some perceived rejection from a woman or girl blah blah blah". I -do- know of a lot of women that come up with "theories" for why men acted a particular way, why their relationship failed, etc...which is exactly what you just did; you pulled that straight out of your ass, because I guarantee no man has EVER told you about obsessing over some playground rejection. Most of these theories are extremely condescending; men are stupid, have no emotions, think with their dick, are obsessive and single-minded, etc. Don't even get me started on some of the conversations I've overheard between two or more lesbians. It used to be in style for guys to make dumb blond jokes; now it's women making dumb guy jokes or statements, and they're usually quite viscious.
Want to talk about childish jokes? I have a camera with a fairly big zoom lens. Perhaps one guy has joked "hey, that's a really thick lens" or somesuch. About a dozen plus women have. Interesting percentages, eh?
Maybe you should stop and consider that most IT workers just don't give a flying fuck who they work with, as long as they're competent/professional, and easy to work with.
Please help metamoderate.
But, why is it so important for women to be using Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian or FOSS in general? I'm all for helping people find nice, free alternatives to , but maybe it's not necessary to push Linux on every unsuspecting, dis-interested user, regardless of their denomination...
Or did I just miss the entire motto of Slashdot?
Will program for karma.
You were the first born.
The first kid is always treated as older than they are. They get the high expectations and responsibilities, no matter if they are male or female.
The second kid is somewhat ignored. They can get away with bad behavior more. The expectations just aren't there.
I don't think that any effort to get a particular group of people interested in Linux is going to do anything. I mean a women's not going to help Fedora just because there is a group for their sex. If a women wants to help any Linux distro she would do it on her own.
Maybe most women are just smart enough not to want to contribute to the nightmare that is Redhat, Fedora, etc. I certainly wouldn't, and I'm just a dumb guy. I dreaded every job that required me to administer Redhat machines, and usually was successful in convincing higher ups how much they could increase my productivity by switching to Debian. I only wish more people could see this, yet it seems may Redhat users are still unaware of the advantages. To them, dealing with dependencies is still just a way of life in Linux, which is absurd. I think women are usually more practical about such things and can see them as part of the larger picture.
chicks don't get computers. nothing to see here, move along...
Why media does create so much fuss around male-female issues? If they don't want to be a part of it, let it be so. I don't want them to be a part of this just because they are women. Please, keep computing and FOSS away from crappy feminism.
and it's boring talking to other women because they get so offended by my off-color remarks that every guy at work finds hilarious.
I've found that a lot of women at work can be more crude than any guys would dare to be. Women can get away with it because they know no guy will ever be offended by it. Guys, on the other hand, have to worry about the things we say offending one of the women. The worst are the women that you never know which side of the fence they are going to fall on. Example, on a conference call we were talking about our weekends...
My PM: He took me to $someplace and we did $something... so, I had to put out.
Me: That seems fair. After all, he did pay for $someplace and $something.
My PM: (Getting serious) I can't believe you said that. You men are all alike, blah, blah, blah.
Me: WTF? You opened the door for the joke.
The problem is that women don't appreciate a good fart joke when they hear one.
I don't know the women you're hanging out with, but most of my female friends appreciate a good fart joke.
Why aren't there more men on the Swedish bikini team? Wait nevermind. Please don't kill me.
I'm going to get flamed to hell for this.
/for themselves/.
/already existing/ community,
I'm sick of women being given special consideration in the tech field.
I believe in a meritocracy - if you have the skills and the knowledge,
fucking prove it. Step up to the plate. Get involved. I know *I* don't
give a fucking care if you're red, white, black, female, handicapped,
just as long as you can do the fucking job set in front of you. Yet here
we have 'special groups' to encourage more women to come out and play -
what, are they afraid to come get their hands dirty and need some sort
of support group before they have the confidence to chip in?
It's the kind of thing that pisses me off about the online gaming clans
of 'all women' teams. Christ, you're anonymous, and can pretend to be
whomever you choose to be, yet you fall back to some safe little sphere
where you're 'all women' and can bond in your little gaming world. Way to
take some risk and get involved.
And here's where I really burn: From my anecdotal evidence, all the women
I've run into in the tech field have been, for the most part, silly girls
who got where they were because they were hand-held by drooling nerds
trying to score some female nerd BOOTAY and never had to fucking do anything
"Oh, having problem with that system upgrade? Let me help, (and maybe I'll
get in your pants!!)".
I find special groups for women secular, isolated, and counter-productive
when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.
But hey, if women out there want to join their "special" club instead of
getting their hands dirty in the massive
then whatever. Hold hands, and sing songs of trial and problems and how
unfair the rest of the world treats you.
lady tuxians :)
http://www.secgeeks.com/
We are going to see the "OMG PONIES!!!" theme return to Slashdot over this...
IMHO is it very sad that something like this gets modded insightful.
I believe that if everyone would just act more professional, it would create a better/more attractive atmosphere for women to work in.
If you want to find a nice girl, go to a bar, lose the obsession and act normal.
I'm male. I'm also disabled, gay, and Hispanic. And you know one nice thing about being a programmer? No-one actually cares about any of these three traits. No-one even knows it unless there is some reason for the topics to come up. And sometimes people joke about my sexuality, my nationality, and sometimes even my disability. And almost without exception, they're having a laugh, and it's funny. I don't feel offended. I don't feel scared away. And the last thing I'd want is some organisation to prop me up for being gay, disabled or Hispanic, instead of for putting in my day's/night's worth an an enthusiastic coder. Have non-white, non-straight people with disabilities been sidelined in the past? Yeah. Are there still heaps of people who would show aversion to me because of one of these characteristics? Yeah, but in other social settings - not the coding community. Of course, having a handicap means certain work is harder for me. I appreciate the help I've obatained in allowing me to be more fully able - i.e., to fulfil my own potential. But only I can stop myself from deciding to fulfil my potential because of my race or my sexuality, as there is no-one there who wants to stop me in this field. Hooray for geeks! The day there is proposed a "blah for Hispanics", "blah for Gays" or "blah for Cripples" corresponding to projects to which I contribute is the same day I object strongly to it, and if counter-arguments fail to convince, I shall probably stop contributing, because I will then be seen for my race/sexuality/disability, whether I like it or not, and I will have access to unfair advantage, whether I like it or not. That's not the geek spirit, it's not furthering human scholarship or creation, and it's not in the interests of freedom!
This is a myth so oft-repeated that it's become widely believed, perpetuating itself. However there is no evidence for it - only a lot of rhetoric. In fact there is extremely strong and irrefutable evidence that traditional 'gender role' tendencies are more genetic than the result of socialisation:
Perhaps you ought to read up on (and try to explain) the case of David Reimer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
This is not the only case:
http://www.infocirc.org/rollston.htm
So much for "socialisation".
Well, of COURSE men and women communicate differently :) That doesn't mean you should exacerbate the situation by only communicating with people of your own gender!
:) Oh, and take the time to get to know (and like!) your coworkers, and you'll have a much easier time judging when you've crossed the line.
Women interpret insults as threats. Men interpret them as challenges.
Women interpret gossip as stress relief. Men interpret it as visciousness.
Some people interpret both insults and gossip as great ways to pass the time and get to know people, and view those who don't participate in such activities as weak and antisocial.
Some people interpret both insults and gossip as vile and hateful, and view those who do participate in such activities as bullies and bitches.
My point? Stereotypes are stupid, insulting people and gossiping and work are both really bad ideas, and we're all human so we do it anyways. But if you think you have a problem with being interpreted as an insulting or gossipy individual, maybe it is getting out of hand. Have some fun and get away from work for a while, readjust your attitude, and be a happier person. Same goes for people who get offended reading slashdot occasionally, like myself
And the first time I ask why this crap even exists I get a hostile response. So yeah, girls seem to agree, they're totally inept at getting themselves into anything. Just like the Debian developers say.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Ubuntu wouldn't be BROWN. The penguin would sport a dinner jacket, bow tie and cuff links. Standard distributions wouldn't come with more than three games - Tetris, Solitaire and Mine. Everything would just be - classier!
Hint: implying that a woman is a whore ... in the workplace ... is usually crossing the line.
HTH!
concertina
It's nice to greet women at the door, so to speak, but as soon as they get into the core (as in kernel) projects, they can be expect to be picked apart and disinvited to kernel conferences should they express any sentiment on par (in conflict or not) with anything the existing patriarchs have done. Have even heard women be called "too dangerous" to invite to a linux kernel conference by some scared, MIT prof patriarch. Any woman wanting to get into that mess has to have extra thick skin. It's fairly well known that testosterone is great for creating tougher, thicker, less sensitive skin.
Of course they will always come up with "specific reasons" why any _specific_ woman is a "problem", but it will almost always amount to the same end result. Fear and a good-ole-boy network that shuts out anyone who doesn't appropriately kiss ***.
I believe it's fundamental to what the community is all about. if you want to keep your clothes on, you can always use proprietry, closed source solutions.
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