Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on June 19, 2006 04:25 PM
You're right in that there is a problem. It's just not the one you think. The actual problem is the decision by some (again, mostly White) women to complain about not being simply handed all the >knowledge about how to be a hacker. Becoming a >hacker takes time and a lot of effort; Linus, RMS, and any other "master hackers" will tell you that.
Hmm. Isn't the GNOME initiative designed to do exactly this? To provide women (who are under-represented in the FOSS developer community) the opportunity to learn and practise being "hackers"?
Or were you imagining that these women would simply be randomly selected, spend the GNOME Summer Outreach Programme getting their nails done, buying shoes and then get handed a "master hacker" certificate at the end?
My understanding is that the programme is about getting women to contribute to GNOME -- so I reckon that means they should have skills to do that and there would be other criteria for selection beyond their sex.
I don't understand how a community which fashions itself as a movement can afford to ignore that it's excluding the other half of the human population. I don't understand why such a move from GNOME is met with such objections. Shouldn't you just be glad that resources are being allocated to bring more people in? Or is the problem because the people this one initiative aims to bring in happen to have vaginas?
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Re:Oh, please....
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 19, 2006 04:25 PMHmm. Isn't the GNOME initiative designed to do exactly this? To provide women (who are under-represented in the FOSS developer community) the opportunity to learn and practise being "hackers"?
Or were you imagining that these women would simply be randomly selected, spend the GNOME Summer Outreach Programme getting their nails done, buying shoes and then get handed a "master hacker" certificate at the end?
My understanding is that the programme is about getting women to contribute to GNOME -- so I reckon that means they should have skills to do that and there would be other criteria for selection beyond their sex.
I don't understand how a community which fashions itself as a movement can afford to ignore that it's excluding the other half of the human population. I don't understand why such a move from GNOME is met with such objections. Shouldn't you just be glad that resources are being allocated to bring more people in? Or is the problem because the people this one initiative aims to bring in happen to have vaginas?
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