Re: Code Of Conduct

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 20:35 +0300, Baris Cicek wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 19:09 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 19:57 +0300, Baris Cicek wrote:
> > > I wanted to put my 2 cents on this women involvement issue.
> > > 
> > > Actually women in proprietary software market have a good motivation
> > > like earning money from what they do. But in free software world, they
> > > hardly have this motivation, and most of time it's volunteer work. 
> > 
> > This is true of everyone, regardless of their gender.
> 
> Absolutely. I also think that if number jumps from 1.5 to 23 for
> females, similar ratios can be given for tech people working for free
> software compared to proprietary software. 

Erm, that doesn't make sense. Let's say that 77% of the proprietary
developers are male. But 99% of the GNOME hackers are male. That's not a
similar ratio. I think you are confusing the groups here. A Venn diagram
may be necessary.
 
> > > I doubt that female enthusiasm to IT is high in the world. Therefore
> > > they need some motivation to get involved. It's something to do with the
> > > loving what you do in Free Software world, and women mostly choose other
> > > things than staying by the computer for hours. If we go deep into this
> > > gender psychology and genetic closeness to particular activities should
> > > be considered. 
> > 
> > By consider, you maybe mean "use as an excuse". I don't think you have
> > the evidence to say that women are inherently incapable or unwilling to
> > do technical work. Not so long ago, it was acceptable to say the same
> > thing about people of different races. That was wrong, and this is
> > wrong.
> Being incapable of and unwilling to are different things.

"Incapable of wanting to" then. It doesn't sound much better to me, and
you are still implying biological/genetic differences as the cause for
lack of female involvement in an industry and society that obviously
makes involvement difficult. It's not a perfect world so it's not all
their fault. 

>  One is
> incapability and one is a choice. I'm just trying to say that "from what
> I have seen", women do not chose it. Like they don't chose to work at a
> construction or at mines. 

They aren't welcomed there either. My sister is a mine engineer. In many
parts of the world she's not allowed to work in mines, and I don't
believe she has equal opportunities in any parts of the world.

> I do respect that. Really. Also those personal observations would really
> change country by country. But numbers you have showed is self evident
> that gender difference has something to do with it.

It's not self evident. You are confusing cause and effect and leaping to
an offensive conclusion.

[snip]
> But maybe finding
> > > some really handsome hackers, and opening a beauty saloon with GNOME
> > > installed computers might help. (was a joke :). 
> > 
> > You need to recognise that there is a problem and avoid this kind of
> > nonsense. It's not necessary and it's not helpful. It should be easy for
> > you to understand that it can make someone feel unwelcome.
> 
> I would not want a sentence that I told to undercover my other sayings.
> My joke was a general one, similar to boys with cars and girls. But
> still if any one find it offensive, I'm sorry. 

We need to be the solution. The wider society means that women expect
not to be taken seriously in GNOME. Try not to prove them right too
much.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com