Re: Question to candidates: what are your quantitative diversity goals and metrics?
Hi Soren,
Am Fri, Mar 29, 2024 at 01:00:36PM -0700 schrieb Soren Stoutner:
> 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.
If the question is that specific I can give some clear answer: I'd
support forming a local group by taking over travel expenses for some in
person meeting. I do not think that a DPL platform (which in my case
was considered lengthy by some people) has room for listing those kind
of specific details.
> 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.
Very cool plan. I love to read it and wish you good luck in it.
> 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.
Interestingly, this issue may be more relevant than you assume. At
DebConf15, Margerita Manterola shed light on pertinent statistics,
revealing that the representation of women in Free Software lags behind
that of the broader IT industry. Within Debian specifically, this gender
gap is even more pronounced compared to the already underrepresented
status within the Free Software community at large. While I don't know
current figures, the prospect of recruiting individuals with a
predisposition towards inclusivity from the wider IT sector could
potentially bolster the presence of non-male developers within Debian.
Moreover as you said yourself your plan sounds pretty effective to work
on the discrimination of people in Arizona.
> 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 can not give any metrics and I see no reason in spending my time on
exact numbers. IMHO the paragraph "Diversity" of my platform is out of
question.
> 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,
Please read my platform again which contains phrases like "As a
potential solution, we might ..."
> 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.”
You surely have read my sentence "I am committed to facilitating
discussions with knowledgeable experts, to actively seek solutions to
these challenges." at the very end was misinterpreted by you as refering
to the previous paragraph but I consider this a general statement also
regarding to diversity problems.
IMHO my platform contains the things you are asking for.
> I don’t think the DPL has to have all the answers going it.
Definitely and I do not pretend to have answers for all questions.
> 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.
I promptly gave the answer: "I will not make false promises and give any
metrics I intend to reach as DPL."[1]
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2024/03/msg00053.html
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