Re: Women in GNOME (Was: Code Of Conduct)

["Dominic Lachowicz" <domlachowicz gmail com>]

> I think it is a natural step to take after the EU and FLOSSPOLS report
> has shown that women are being excluded from the community.-

This rubs me the wrong way. It's not like we're actively working to
exclude women, Asians, or Martians from GNOME. Nor are we actively
trying to make GNOME a boys-only club. Simply put, there's no
conscious, malicious intent behind the disproportionate male/female
ratio, or "Western"/Asian ratio. And I think that this matters...

> If we want to se some change in attitudes and behavior in GNOME and
> FLOSS, and se more women involved in the future in all parts and
> capacities of our projects, we need to find out why only a little more
> than 1% of are women.

... because I don't believe that actively pursuing "diversity" for its
own sake is a valid goal. I may sound myopic here, but I don't see
what the goal of recruiting women qua women or Asians qua Asians gains
us as a community. I refuse to measure diversity based on one's
genitals or skin color.

[However, (for example) recruiting Asians as an attempt to understand
their needs, skills, and mentality in order to acquire a greater Asian
market share, however, could be ok. Asians are the means. A rockin'
version of GNOME on lots of Asian computers is the end.]

Instituting open-door policies, non-discriminatory policies/"codes of
conduct", and the like are worthwhile goals in-and-of themselves. They
advertise what the core tenets of our community are, and this is
something we should become better at. But one should not necessarily
abandon established (nay, endearing) traits of our community just to
grow it larger. You'd give up something concretely cool about the
community for some undefined, possibly non-existant benefit. And that
ain't diversity, it's its opposite.

I'd rather see us resolve to do a better job of marketing how open,
cool, and charismatic we are as a community, and let the chips fall
where they will. Get the word out to as many people as practicable,
welcome everyone, and let the diversity come to us as an organic
result of our general openness and coolness. Where we have some
specific goal in mind, change as necessary to meet that goal. But
don't change for change's sake alone.

Recruit interesting people. Recruit smart, talented people. Recruit
people useful for your ends. Welcome all people. But don't recruit
genitals and skin colors. They're neither interesting nor useful for
free software's purposes. Justice is blind, and so should we be.

Best,
Dom
--
Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums.