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Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else)
From: |
Andreas Enge |
Subject: |
Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else) |
Date: |
Fri, 1 Nov 2019 10:32:28 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.12.1 (2019-06-15) |
Hello Sandra,
thanks a lot for your personal account and well-argumented description
of how you see the situation.
On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 05:22:03PM -0600, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
> The absolute worst thing the public-facing representative
> of *any* organization can do is bring negative publicity to the organization
> about things that are irrelevant or contrary to the organization's mission.
> As a result of RMS's comments, all of a sudden the public conversation about
> the GNU project was not about how good our software is and how free software
> is taking over the world and beneficial to everybody, it was about how we're
> an organization with an ingrained culture of harassing and demeaning women,
> (...)
> It's been a public relations disaster for the GNU project. :-(
>
> IMO, to regain control of our public image, I think we have to take some
> explicit and public steps to disassociate the GNU project from RMS's
> comments.
This was indeed my main motivation to sign the open letter at
http://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/
so if people ask me about it I will direct them to your message :-)
> It has bothered me for a long time that there are so few women participating
> in the GNU community. I think I might be the only female maintainer on
> either GCC/Binutils right now (I haven't gone through the lists, but the
> others I used to know about have stepped down). The photos of the attendees
> at recent Cauldrons show a group that is roughly 99% male. The steering
> committee is 100% male. There is something wrong with our community that we
> cannot attract more women, and we need to fix it, because a developer
> community that consists almost exclusively of old white men is not
> sustainable.
Do you have ideas on how to change that, maybe on a per-package basis?
For instance, did you experience things in GCC/Binutils or in other
environments that you think might help to attract more women, or more
generally to make diverse groups of potential contributors feel more
welcome?
Andreas
- Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else),
Andreas Enge <=
- Re: Women and GNU and RMS (was Re: something else), Dora Scilipoti, 2019/11/01
- List posting rules, Mark Wielaard, 2019/11/01
- Re: List posting rules, Dora Scilipoti, 2019/11/01
- Re: List posting rules, Carlos O'Donell, 2019/11/01
- Re: List posting rules, Jean Louis, 2019/11/01
- Re: List posting rules, Ruben Safir, 2019/11/01
- Re: List posting rules, Alexandre François Garreau, 2019/11/01