Re: Question to all: Outreach
Hi,
On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 12:01:28PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > Honestly, I don't think it's a problem we can solve right now, but at
> > the very least, we should do whatever it takes to not be part of the
> > problem, and we should take every small step we can take to be the good
> > guys and help shift things toward equality.
> Debian's main goal is to provide a Linux distribution. Not to make politics.
Providing a Linux distribution is a political act in itself. We are giving
access to information technology to people who would not have that access
otherwise.
It is hard to separate the political act of providing a free operating
system to people who could buy a commercial one from the political act of
providing a free operating system to people who couldn't.
Paid programs like Outreachy further extend the circle of people who we
provide a Linux distribution to, and in doing so, also extends the circle
of potential contributors.
One of the things I still remember from DebConf 4 in Porto Alegre was when
a man was talking to us at a bus stop because we had backpacks with Debian
logos on them, and he told us how his daughter was now learning to use
Linux at the local telecentro, and he was hoping she'd get a good job
later.
What we do has an impact wide outside our current community, and there is
also significant potential for future contributors outside our current
community -- but for some of these, some hurdles have to be cleared away.
The Debian project doing so is no more political than existing in the first
place.
Simon
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