I think it is a natural step to take after the EU and FLOSSPOLS report has shown that women are being excluded from the community.-
This rubs me the wrong way. It's not like we're actively working to exclude women, Asians, or Martians from GNOME. Nor are we actively trying to make GNOME a boys-only club. Simply put, there's no conscious, malicious intent behind the disproportionate male/female ratio, or "Western"/Asian ratio. And I think that this matters...
If we want to se some change in attitudes and behavior in GNOME and FLOSS, and se more women involved in the future in all parts and capacities of our projects, we need to find out why only a little more than 1% of are women.
... because I don't believe that actively pursuing "diversity" for its own sake is a valid goal. I may sound myopic here, but I don't see what the goal of recruiting women qua women or Asians qua Asians gains us as a community. I refuse to measure diversity based on one's genitals or skin color. [However, (for example) recruiting Asians as an attempt to understand their needs, skills, and mentality in order to acquire a greater Asian market share, however, could be ok. Asians are the means. A rockin' version of GNOME on lots of Asian computers is the end.] Instituting open-door policies, non-discriminatory policies/"codes of conduct", and the like are worthwhile goals in-and-of themselves. They advertise what the core tenets of our community are, and this is something we should become better at. But one should not necessarily abandon established (nay, endearing) traits of our community just to grow it larger. You'd give up something concretely cool about the community for some undefined, possibly non-existant benefit. And that ain't diversity, it's its opposite. I'd rather see us resolve to do a better job of marketing how open, cool, and charismatic we are as a community, and let the chips fall where they will. Get the word out to as many people as practicable, welcome everyone, and let the diversity come to us as an organic result of our general openness and coolness. Where we have some specific goal in mind, change as necessary to meet that goal. But don't change for change's sake alone. Recruit interesting people. Recruit smart, talented people. Recruit people useful for your ends. Welcome all people. But don't recruit genitals and skin colors. They're neither interesting nor useful for free software's purposes. Justice is blind, and so should we be. Best, Dom -- Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums. _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
