Re: Diversity statement for the Debian Project
Le Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 05:31:35PM +0200, Francesca Ciceri a écrit :
> Even if bikeshedding is sometimes really annoying, this is the right way
> to reach a consensus on a such important document and transform it from a
> copy-pasted template to *our* diversity statement. :)
Hi,
I still do not understand why we need to have "our" diversity statement,
attempt to re-write what has been well written by others. To me, it is like
license proliferation. Or imagine if each Debian derivative felt they need to
write their own compatible version of the DFSG to better show their attachement
to software freedom. Dreamwidth's statement is inspiring; it is the kind of
text that is nice to disover one morning, as it will may that day better. But
as many other proses, modifying it for the sake of it will not result in an
improvement. Why do not we write simply that we recognise ourselves in the
spirit of Dreamwidth's statement ? In particular, one crucial difference with
the current proposal is that Dreamwidth's text makes an extensive use of long
list as a figure of style, while in our case it sill gives me a feeling of
legalese.
More of a detail, but for the neurotypes, I think that it is important to leave
this out. On debian-devel, we have to be accurate when we discuss about things
(like init systems). Why on debian-project wouldn't it be the same ? I could
not find a reference defintion of neurotype on the Internet. I think that teaching
people that they have a different neurotype is as wrong and harmful as teaching
them that the reason of their problems was that their parents did not love them.
We need to be humble and recognise that in some cases, we do not understand
what makes people suffer.
I think that we give a wrong image, and false hopes, with a list that goes too
far on the details. Why not focusing on the categories for which we know that
we actually do something, and document what we do. That is also where we stand
out from other groups: do-ocraty.
- We have debian-women and other expression media to work to reduce
passive and active discrimination.
- Our infrastructure tries to be as non-discriminative as possible,
and for instance we do not require members to indicate their sex or gender
in our LDAP database (although if I remember well, we can if we want).
- Any other ? Do we enforce for instance that sponsored events that include organised
meals must give opportunity for vegetarians to have proper menus if they ask for ?
And as part of a painful exercise, why not writing black on white where we
think that we can not act.
- While we welcome people with any nationality, we probably can not give
access to some of our servers located in country A, to people living
or nationals of country B, where A embargoes B.
- We require our members to identify themselves with official papers delivered
from their state, so if their state is hostile to their minority (like
refusing to change the name for transgender or transsexuals), we can not help.
Have a nice day, and many thanks again for bringing this up. This will be an
important contribution to Debian.
--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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