Why Debian (Women)?

[Clytie Siddall <clytie@riverland.net.au>]

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Hello again everybody :)

Time I had another cuppa...

But to the gist:

On 23/04/2005, at 4:34 PM, Helen Faulkner wrote:

> What do you think is different about Debian or Debian Women that makes
> you feel more welcomed here compared with other places?  What are we
> doing right and wrong in that, do you think?  I would like to have
> Debian Women as welcoming as possible to the "right" kind of person (ie
> people who are genuinely interested in Debian and in increasing the
> participation of women in Debian), so comments about that are always
> appreciated.

What has been different here ... I was actually invited to participate. 
Everywhere else I have blundered into the translation situation. 
Christian is a great co-ordinator: he interested me in the job, gave me 
all the information I needed (most of which he and others had evidently 
spent a lot of time and effort preparing for everyone involved), and 
helped me out whenever I needed it. God only knows when he sleeps. :D  
He may not get to, until I have my svn working...

So that was the start. I started looking around at Debian. I was then 
very impressed by the standard of the Debian .po files. Somebody has, 
or a number of people have spent a lot of time and effort in producing 
really well-checked and well-set-out .po files, and that helps the 
translator so much. For once, I felt not completely alone in the job. I 
have some support from the other two active translators on my team, but 
we're spread very thin, so it has been an isolated task.

What I read about Debian helped me understand why my son, a notoriously 
demanding and hard-to-convince person, is so enthusiastic about Debian. 
You not only have an ethos, you live it. There are certainly people 
elsewhere trying to create positive change in OSS, but here there seem 
to be more of them working together. At least, that is the impression I 
get at this stage. I find it encouraging.

Then Christian emailed me about this group, and asked me to join. That 
was another, and very welcoming act, and I appreciated it very much. 
Like the translation info, the Debian Women info online is well-set-out 
and easy to access; it's also personal, which is something the OSS 
arena tends to lack, and a critical element for women, in my 
experience. We are very good at networking and supporting each other, 
so any isolated or impersonal arena disempowers us significantly.

If there's one thing disability teaches you, it's a fundamental 
appreciation for life in any form, but particularly life that makes the 
most of what it has. Debian in general, and Debian Women in particular, 
appear to be good example of that: "it's not the cards you're dealt, 
it's how you play the game".

from Clytie (vi-VN, team/nhóm Gnome-vi)

Clytie Siddall--Renmark, in the Riverland of South Australia

Ở thành phố Renmark, tại miền sông của Nam Úc
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