What a disappointment... The world is black and white, Free software
is doomed and male free software developers are the vermin of society,
asocial and weird ... Hmm, why should I take the rest of the article
serious?</sarcasm>
I agree with your disappointment, Frank. However, my disappointment --
and irritation -- stems from the utter inaccuracy of the following
passage:
"For example, a core element of geek culture is a focus on 'hard'
technical issues, such as operating system internals and network
stacks, with a corresponding scorn for 'human' issues, such as
usability and user interface design. When people (male and female) who
care about usability attempt to contribute to FLOSS projects, they're
often ignored, jeered at or told, 'What do you mean, it's ugly? I can
use it!' The result? Linux desktops like KDE/Gnome, which no one but a
propellerhead could love."
This is patently wrong.
I'm aware that the discussion of usability and GNOME is not on-topic
for this list, however, inaccuracy about something that is as easy to
fact-check as GNOME's usability intiative does not lend credibility to
the rest of the article. As it happens, I don't agree with some of the
authors' more specific comments regarding the reasons for the lack of
women in the FLOSS community, but I am concerned that readers may be
discouraged from taking the more general concerns about the small
numbers of women involved in free and open source software projects
seriously, dismissing them as being as erroneous as the article's
assertions about the GNOME community.