On Thursday, March 28, 2024 6:53:19 PM MST Roberto C. Sánchez wrote: > So, I repeat my question to the candidates: what are your quantitative > diversity goals and metrics, and what are the rationales behind those > goals and metrics? I would just like to add my support to Roberto for asking this question. When I was reading over the platforms I had the same question he did, which is that I was uncertain as to exactly what the candidates meant with regards to diversity and what specific things they would do to address it (their descriptions were a bit amorphous to me). Nothing about my interest in understanding the candidates position about diversity should in any way be interpreted as antagonism towards their diversity goals. Rather, I would just like to understand how they see the problem and what things they would like to do to address it, including any metrics as to what they think would be attainable progress. Personally, I am one of only two Debian Developers that I know of living in Arizona. So, from a local geographic diversity perspective, I would like to see a few more Debian Developers that I could meet up with face-to-face. In that regard, I am actively trying to recruit people I know to get involved in Debian. Those efforts can take a while to play out, but I would hope that over the next 2-3 years I can recruit at least 1-2 people and mentor them through the process of becoming Debian Developers. Separate from efforts to recruit Debian Developers in general, I am a self- employed small business owner. Currently, I do not have any employees besides myself. However, if current plans materialize, I would hope to add a few employees over the next couple of years. When that happens, part of my employment contract would be that I would like them to dedicate up to 5 hours of paid company time per week to work on any part of Debian that interests them. The hope would be that they would eventually become Debian Developers and that they would continue their association with Debian even if they left my company’s employ. This second part relates more to the discussion about recruiting more people to Debian in general (as opposed to any specific diversity goal) as well as the discussion about paid contributions to Debian and trying to get companies to sponsor employee time working on Debian. Returning to the Roberto’s question, as both candidates have made this a part of their platform, I would hope that they could make a simple statement along the lines of, “These are the specific groups I see underrepresented in Debian (perhaps even with some specific numbers about how underrepresented they are) and these are the specific things I would like to do to improve their representation (perhaps with some specific metrics as to what they think can be accomplished during their term as the DPL).” I do understand that maybe their statement looks more like, “These are the specific groups I see underrepresented. I don’t have any idea of how to fix that, but I think it is important and as the DPL I would be open to any ideas from members of the project and would be committed to investing time and appropriate resources to implementing any good ideas that surface from those suggestions.” I don’t think the DPL has to have all the answers going it. But I would hope that Roberto’s excellent question and his consistency in noting that it hasn’t yet been answered, would be helpful in directing the entire conversation towards concrete things we can implement to improve the situation. -- Soren Stoutner soren@debian.org
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