I saw this today and was reminded of why it's important to do what we're doing - or at least what motivates me to work on it.
http://geekfeminism.org/2010/04/09/is-requiring-open-source-experience-sexist/#comments The comments on this post are long, but worth reading. For me, this is one of the big reasons I'd love to see FOSS contribution taught in schools, as an attractive option for fulfilling one's academic requirements, as opposed to only being available "in one's free time," which for students with family, financial, etc. constraints may not exist. I sometimes tell people I wouldn't have gotten into open source if I hadn't left home for high school (I attended the residential public magnet high school school for my state). The long stretches of uninterrupted time I had in my dorm room to be exposed to people who were into Linux (and supportive of me playing with the same), become fascinated with code, tinker with Debian, etc. were only present when I was living at school - during summers and vacations, my learning crawled to a standstill as I was interrupted to wash dishes, watch kids, chided for spending too much time on the computer talking to people my family didn't know instead of being on-call to help out around the house, and so forth. If I hadn't been able to "catch the bug" while I was in school, I wouldn't have the energy to fight to preserve my ability to learn about and contribute to these things later on in life (like now). For some people, school is the best place to get prolonged, consistent exposure to opportunities for FOSS contribution, which can lead directly to more opportunities down the line. (It worked for me!) One of the results of what we're doing at TOS is opening up these opportunities to those who may currently not be able (or easily able) to pay the invisible "privilege tax" required to gain access. There are many more good things that come from teaching open source - but this is one that I've found often overlooked, and the primary reason I continue to contribute in this space. </soapbox> Why are *you* here? --Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
