Although I belong to a commonly marginalized group, women in computing,
I was lucky enough to get my first job in 1970. During the 1970's, when
I was building my career, people like Grace Hopper and Jean Sammet were
very active. I don't think anyone I met seriously questioned whether
women could be technical leaders.
By the time programming became male-dominated, I was too firmly
established to be affected.
On 6/26/2019 4:54 PM, Sage Sharp wrote:
You've just had two people from marginalized groups in tech tell you that
the ASF policy is discriminatory. Maybe it's time to listen to their
experiences, rather than get defensive?
My previous comment on this:
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/d024e2b8327772901a06c69e7b31df4e04662a01450b8d2390ac1ca1@%3Cdev.diversity.apache.org%3E
When the ASF doesn't directly pay people to work on software, it becomes a
catch-22. Employers don't want to employ people from marginalized groups
because they don't have a software portfolio. A way to get a software
portfolio is to work on free software in their spare time, but people from
marginalized groups aren't likely to have the time or resources to do
unpaid work. The ASF doesn't want to pay people from marginalized groups to
write software. Thus the status quo remains.
Unless free software communities start paying people from marginalized
groups (through Outreachy, GSoC, or travel grants), there will be no
improvement on the inequality in the software industry.
Sage Sharp
Outreachy Organizer
On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 4:45 PM Ross Gardler
<[email protected]> wrote:
I disagree. The ASF is designed to enable others to monetize or software
do that *they* can pay people to contribute.
If we pay for code we enter into competition with the those people.
Thereby reducing the money available in the market to employ people.
Do you really believe the ASF could create as many jobs as have been
created by the industries that use our software?
Creating software to create jobs is our role as a charity. It is not to
create jobs directly.
Ross
Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36>
________________________________
From: Patricia Shanahan <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2019 4:36:12 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Outreachy framework proposal
Not paying for code is a highly discriminatory policy.
A typical employed or retired programmer in wealthy country, faced with
a wish to build a large body of code, will ask themselves, "Which of my
computers should I use?". Downloading the code will be trivial over
their unlimited-data, high-bandwidth, Internet connection. We do not
notice our computer access or Internet bandwidth any more than a fish
notices water. Doesn't everyone measure their data storage capacity in
terabytes?
Now consider, even in the US, a programmer who has developed some form
of chronic fatigue, making the times they can work too unpredictable to
hold down a job or reliably fulfill contracts, living off social
security. Or someone in sub-Saharan Africa, who shares a computer with
their village if they are lucky, and connects to the Internet by
tethering to a phone with a limited data plan.
Not paying for code means not just favoring those who have certain
resources of time, computer power, and Internet bandwidth, but
absolutely excluding those who do not have those resources and cannot
afford them.
The board may consider the principle of not paying for code so valuable
as to outweigh its discriminatory nature, but please don't pretend it
does not discriminate.
On 6/26/2019 3:26 PM, Ross Gardler wrote:
...
I would encourage the committee to focus on building a proposal that
fits within the expectations of the board, who act as they believe the
membership expect. Arguing, about the validity of a long held policy, which
itself does not discriminate, is a waste of time that could be better spent
on mentoring individuals.
..
