Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:11:55 +1000, Matthew Palmer <mpalmer@debian.org> said:
> On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:56:49PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:41:33 +1000, Matthew Palmer
>> <mpalmer@debian.org> said:
>> > On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 01:47:51PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
>> >> Or is the contention that there is some barrier to involvement
>> >> by women (and only women) in the project itself? Because such
>> >> an allegation should be backed up with some solid facts.
>>
>> > Barrier to involvement by anyone who doesn't feel keen on getting
>> > involved with a percieved bunch of rowdy social-teenagers. Which
>> > happens to primarily be women (although I know several men who
>> > have declined active participation in Debian, despite definitely
>> > being technically qualified).
>>
>> I strongly suspect that this is not limited to women -- indeed,
>> people raised in the occidental tradition, regardless of gender,
>> may be better able to deal with the culture in Debian than
>> societies where one role in the group is percieved to be more
>> important than individual beliefs and views.
> So you think that changing our culture to be less confrontational
> would be beneficial to encouraging participation by multiple groups?
> Excellent.
Well. Being less confrontational can lead to a more productive
dialogue, yes, and stop wasting our time in flamefests. But a number
of such confrontational interactions in the past have challenged what
used to be well established ideas, and thus mitigated against group
think; any evolution away from the current norm should consider what
would be lost.
The free software world has always benefited from selection
pressure and competition between opposing solutions; when some thing
does not work as you like, you are encouraged to change it to your
liking, and if there are different viewpoints, well, projects get
forked, and we have a broader solkution base that caters to both view
points (ideally speaking).
This culture of create a solution to meet your own needs, and
let the best solution win (suboptimal solutions lose mind share) is
one of the major strengths of free software. We may find, however,
that this also engenders a certain competitiveness, especially in
grabbing mind share; and you can't totally eliminate one without
harming the other.
manoj
"not everything is either black or white"
--
The fewer our wants, the nearer we resemble the gods. -- Socrates
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
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