I got to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit Saturday night, so I didn't see Richard Stallman's talk. From what I heard, the Free Software portion was fairly good, but I heard several people recall his Saint Ignucius segment about how some women in the audience were "EMACS virgins" and should be introduced to it, etc. Lefty described it well in his own post, so I won't go into that detail.
Of course, Stallman's satire immediately reminded me of the FLOSSPOLS reports, which reference an earlier study showing that women were only 1.8% of participants in open source in 2005. I think things have improved slightly since then, but not nearly as much as I would have hoped.
While what he said didn't seem to be overtly sexist, it certainly creates a more hostile and uninviting environment for women in our projects. As the FLOSSPOLS reports suggest, it's important that we (Gnome, KDE, Free Software in general) make a point to emphasize that we do not support hostility against our community members. This is the reason why, for instance, Gnome and Debian have adopted Codes of Conduct.
Richard is of course welcome to think and say whatever he wants, but if he's going to claim some position of leadership, I don't want him lumping together unrelated and offensive material with his advocacy of Free Software. If he insists to continue, I'd like him to openly acknowledge that he doesn't represent many or most of us in the Free Software community that he claims to.
a relevant quote
Well said
/elvis
He wasn't trying to do harm
You said that only 18% of women participate in OO. So, it might be true that most of women are Emacs' virgins. One thing you have to give to him, he wasn't lying and he wasn't ill intentioned either. There is a difference between saying "Women should leave computers to us and GTFO to the kitchen a make us some sandwich" and saying that women are Emacs virgin and his holy duty is to change that (or whatever I didn't heard his speech).
The way I see it, you guys do more damage to women thinking that they are so sensible.
Re: He wasn't trying to do harm
Important note here - it wasn't 18% -- it was 1.8% (one point eight). The fact that it's so low means that we're obviously doing something wrong. If it means losing some unfunny jokes, that seems like a fair compromise.
(And by "unfunny", I don't even mean "offensive" here; some of my favorite humor is fairly offensive, but it's in the context of a comedy club or amongst close friends, etc., where it isn't going to alienate people)
> The way I see it, you guys do more damage to women thinking that they are so sensible.
Please read the FLOSSPOLS report. Apparently similar behavior has turned a lot of women away from FOSS, so it actually does matter. And I wouldn't describe it as "being sensitive" as much as "not wanting to be treated like an outsider" and "being creeped out by unsolicited, inappropriate sexual commentary from clueless geeks".
You don't see it's funny, do you?
I know there's a difference between a journalist and a conference attendee, but I have no reason to doubt the people I talked to.
Much Appreciated!
Luis Villa put it really well in his posting at http://tieguy.org/blog/2009/04/30/thoughtlessness-in-open-source/:
"I want the [...] open source [...] communities [I participate in] to be a dignified, respectful, inclusive, and welcoming place. … We’ve all been witnesses to off-color jokes, misogynistic back channel chatter, questionable imagery and unnecessary, trolling comments. I pledge to do better to stand up and call this behavior out when I see it in conferences, online and other public settings. I don’t expect it to go away but I’m not going to tacitly condone it any longer."