well i've only been to one industry conference in person (and watched some after they've been web published), but maybe i've seen em all!

yep, deviating away from the cookie-cutter presentations and easing up a little on the ego death grip by introducing a bit of creativity and originality could go a long way.

As a rank outsider I may be way off, but I thought Linux community was really about local stuff like LUGs. It's obvious the developer summits will be cliquey, though they should be less blokey. Linux really does need to do more to include women. I can see that even from the fringes over here.

The here and now is dismal. Linux is hampered by its lack of real diversity and growth in numbers of new contributors: hardly any women, 1.5% according to the FLOSSPOLs study...

Oh now you tell me...I only do what I do for the chix...I was wunderin' what was wrong...

But seriously folks.

I was both flattered and excited when I was asked to attend the 2008 Collaboration summit in Austin. "The brightest minds in Open Source will gather..." Besides, I drove 15 minutes every day to get there...not exactly a travel expense sacrifice.

I think Stormy Peters and a couple others behind the registration desk were the only women I really saw...I know that the social activities down on the infamous 6th street at a nice watering hole smelled like old spice, obsession and the New York Jets locker room...prowling for female companionship took about 4 minutes.

Carla the problems between the real "community" and the LF run much deeper. Tom King and I stood in front of Jim Zemlin and expressed our concerns for the lack of discussion about Desktop Linux, where we were promised it would be discussed. We were told by Mr. Zemlin that the future of Linux was in the enterprise and that there would be no real effort on the part of that enterprise to push it to the people that needed it most.

Fine...finished...no more conferences or symnposiums. I stay my narrow backside here and focus on what I believe to be important.

Most of the beards, aside from a few famous ones I slung suds with, share the same opinion.

But look...When you can sit at the same table with John "Mad Dog" Hall, Bruce Perens, SJVN and Joe Barr and feel like you are a part of that club...

Well, there may be hope for "the community" after all.

However there is hope but on a distant horizon...you need to watch boh...we're gonna talk about this.

h

It's sad to hear this kind of thing is still going on. We lose so much by not having women involved. Women are much better at collaborating and getting things done. Sad, really sad.

Hear hear! The 20th century way of doing things got us where we are today. Yes, we've made progress, but what is our market share? We need to creatively strategize on how to open up the projects to many more volunteers. These folks don't need to be experts, as Kirrily Roberts so eloquently showed at OSCON. But if we *design in* the welcoming and open atmosphere, people WILL come help.

Hello Carla.

I've been a fan of your writing for a long time.

I think the issue is more sociological in nature than it is insider-ness.

I don't really think the Linux Foundation had intended for the Linuxcon to be a sausage fest like you observed, it's just that those are the type of people who come to brainy/boring Linux conventions.

"Linux is hampered by its lack of real diversity and growth in numbers of new contributors: hardly any women, 1.5%…"
Is it because there's a big sign somewhere saying "No Wimin Allowed" or is it because women in general don't write and donate software?
Why aren't there more male hairdressers?
Blaming the people who DO donate code for not being one sex or the other is a waste of time.

"How do we attract and retain new contributors?"
I think you start out right with "valuing all contributors" etc. but I think you may be scaring people away with a list of must haves: "Ongoing software maintenance, etc. … it's not enough to fling some code out into the world and hope something good happens."

Whoa. I just wanted to donate a piece of code or an icon or help with documentation. You've described lot's of work I don't have time for. Lowering the barrier to entry is key.

I don't know that you'll ever get lots of women to write software in their "spare time" just to give it away. Speaking of which, what spare time? Every woman I've met has a social life unlike your average coder.

Perhaps, it's just my male point of view.

Keep up the good work.
JC

Helios, you wrote the comment I started to write except that I couldn't write it properly (for obvious lack of experience) so instead took a break from it to write about patents. [Coincidentally, I was going to mention efforts like yours.]

Carla, the community, in the sense you and many are talking about, is we the little people. There is strategy for what the big dogs do, but unless you want to surrender to their timeline and way of the world (and secrets and mysteries), I would not hold my breath expecting change.

Carla, I've thought about your previous article for a few days. I left a comment there, however because of a health problem my comments are not always clear. I have reaped the benefits of linux even though I know nothing about coding, so I don't really give back to the community except to tell others about linux. When I first started with linux and went to the forums for help, I often felt I was being treated as an outsider because I was obviously new and green.

On the subject of women in the FOSS world I see you have very strong feelings about it and from reading your past articles I disagree with those who have suggested you are ranting or being petty.I have read your articles for quite some time. You have obviously payed your dues. I know from my own experience in the working world that negative attitudes toward women still persist. There is no justification for this. Comparing other cultures, biology, or any other phony reason is just hot air, nothing more. What I am taking too many words to say is that people need to be more accepting of others. As Helios has pointed out the true community is often outside the conferences and that is a shame.
Paul Sams

Linus Torvalds atleast "sabotaged" the good reputation of Linux by that "Linux is too bloat" comment. What a interesting thing, everytime something negative has said about Linux it reaches the headlines. Atleast here in Finland. And don't you ever think that we here see Linus "The Son of Nils" Torvalds as an "god" at all. Personally i find Richard Stallman as a man who really has something to say. His comment about one traitor might sound a bit "Stalin's Purge" but honestly - it was rather realistic. Linus tries perhaps subconsciously escape the stalinism (connected always here to his father's past)

But, of course, The Linux Foundation is not about community, at least not as you or I might define it. It's about Big Business, it's about what Big Business wants, it has nothing at all in common with the likes of us... the little people, we don't matter where the community of the Linux Foundation is focused. We, male or female are not part of this "community", we are deliberately excluded, because where we want to take Linux has nothing to do with the Server, with HPC, with Cloud. All of these things are the current passions and toys of Big Business, not those who want a Free stable secure desktop.

I am tired of articles and blogs like this. I do agree women need to be taken more seriously in the IT world. But this isn't helping the problem at all. Many of these like articles or blogs consist of a percentage number as their evidence that women are being discriminated against in the Open Source Community. Numbers don't mean much. If you have actual evidence of such activities than please post about it, otherwise you have nothing to go on.

There are issues from time to time with some people. I have definitely met my share of idiots in the IT world, and have dealt with them myself. I would like to see articles of conversations or screenshots of such negative activity that is going on, that way the people responsible are shown to the IT world and dealt with accordingly. But what I'm seeing instead is people making baseless articles using figures and unrelated items to convey a message without actual evidence.

Instead of attacking the Linux Community, why don't you go after those that are actually causing the problem. Going after a large group like this doesn't help at all and just helps hide the real issue going on. these articles do more damage really because I don't want people to be FORCED to accept my work because I'm a woman, but rather accept my work because of the work by merits.

So please, no more postings about things like this. If you do, please offer actual conversations or evidence on a individual basis so we can deal with the people that are causing the problem, instead of making the problem even worse.

-Jessica-
archlinux_jessica@yahoo.com

Carla, I know that Debian has had its share of problems in this regard, but I do see more than a few women involved in the project, and I hope to see more.

And Ubuntu seems to be doing better than average on that score as well.

When you talk about actually DOING FOSS:

"If you're nattering on all the time about Community, how about having some genuine community contests like coding, documentation, artwork, interface design, ideas for engaging and teaching young people? Something that is attractive to everyone and has some lasting value, rather than yet another exercise in chummy insider-ness."

... that is the meat of it. Not just that we should be DOING things, but also that it's coding AND more (the docs, artwork, marketing/promotion) that can engage more current or potential members of the community.

And I include myself as a non-coder but big promoter.

And my various hats are off to Helios, as always, for being one of the non-corporate ground troops that is really putting money and mouth together.

Can anybody, anywhere, tell me why Novell is still a member of the Linux Foundation?

@Rex: SuSE Linux and, of course, they are big Business..... oh yeah, they pay their subs.

With all due respect, my opinions change because sometimes I'm wrong. It would be nice to always be 100% right, like the free-software crowd, but I'm imperfect and so is my understanding of open source. It's constantly evolving. Yours should be, too.