F*m*n*sts

I’ve been watching this trend with amazement. Now, as LinuxMagazine writes, “The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNOME Foundation are targeting higher women’s participation in the community”.

Why, and I’m absolutely serious about this, why do you want that? Why do you care if it’s male or female brain that excellent ideas come from?

You write: “Individual projects have found ways to make women welcome…”. What the heck? No, really! Show me a single FLOSS project that blatantly refused to welcome women. Or the one that pointedly ignored their contributions. I’m really curious.

You write later: “The report from the summer of 2009 layed out some U.S. educational figures: in 2006 only 20% of computer science students were women going for their bachelor’s degree”. Well, I feel sorry for you. If you come to visit Moscow State Technical University you’ll see that about half of students there are women. YMMV.

At my previous job practically all girls in cluster/data centre department were either studying at MSTU or Moscow State University of Aerospace Technologies or Moscow Engineering Physics Institute or have had graduated from either of them. YMMV.

We’ve already been through discussions about stupid people and their “show me your boobs” requests. We don’t have issues about women not being welcome. We have an issue of having dicks in the community who do not respect other people.

I’ve been to many forums for designers and even though offensive jokes towards women are so rare there that people would queue up to read them for novelty sake, women usually don’t make above 15% of presence there. While in fact making 1/2 of designers community (at least where I live). And I daresay most interior designers here are women. Again, lots of women in photographers communities while at the same time really few of them when it comes to discussing some bloody 1:1 crops with different interpolation methods.

Somehow a lot of women just don’t feel like joining techie communities or discussing techie things. So why do you want them to do it? Because you want it? And will you drag them kicking and screaming into the bright new Century of Women in FLOSS if they refuse?

So if you make women a special case in FLOSS, here is an idea. We need more dwarfs in FLOSS. And trolls. And while at that, why not get more werewolves? There really are so few of them. Since you care

It’s really amazing how some people cannot twist their heads around a very simple idea that equal rights does not actually mean equal interests.