Back in mid-February, I was invited to participate in a review of
EU government policy support research
on gender issues in Free Software communities at the University of
Cambridge. The meeting was fascinating to me not
only because of my level of interest in
the content, but also because the reviewers were a wonderfully diverse group
of genuinely interesting people. I also must admit that being a
guest of Kings College for two nights
was quite an experience in and of itself...
As someone who has been a strong proponent of the idea that approaches and
technologies adopted by Free Software developers are something other
communities might want to borrow from or emulate, I found the results of this
research both disturbing and enlightening. The disturbance centers around
just how strongly male-biased our current behaviors seem to be in practice,
particularly in the Debian project. My moment of enlightenment was the
realization that many of the ideas we
discussed about how to encourage and enable more female participation in our
communities could simultaneously make our projects more appealing and rewarding
to all of our contributors!
I've talked to various people about this research in my travels since the
meeting in February, and many have followed up asking for pointers to
the findings. I was pleased to learn this morning that the
integrated report of findings
and
recommendations
from this work are finally available online.
I hope at least some of you will read this report, and will then be as
interested as I am in looking for ways to change the status quo. Perhaps a
BOF at the upcoming
Debian developer's conference
to discuss these results and brainstorm specific actions we can take in
the Debian project would be a good place to start? I expect to arrive
late on the 15th, and must depart early on the morning of the 21st...
[[!tag tags/debian]]