4 ms·

What exactly was the motivation for this? Was there actually a problem?

• roopeshv 14y ago
  atleast from the way it is written; i guess sexism, racism, eliticism, trolls, may be some narcissism as well
• liw 14y ago
  There does not need to be a problem, it can be a good idea for a person or a project to express their ideals and values anyway. That said, Debian has very few female developers (1-2%?), and is generally skewed towards white, ethnically European males who are sysadmins or programmers and who mainly work on packaging software. See for example the group photos from the yearly Debian conference (debconf.org). There's room for a lot more diversity: various genders; ethnic backgrounds; technical interests and skills; lingistic, social and cultural backgrounds; personalities; etc. There is fairly little overt rejection of those who are different from the majority of Debian developers, but there is definitely some inadvertent systemic preference to recruit more of the same. I don't know about recent intentional pressure to exclude those who divert from the traditional mainstream: I am a privileged white European male, I would not even notice if someone else does not feel welcome for whatever reason. I would like to notice, and I would like everyone to be welcome. The diversity statement is one step in making sure Debian is welcoming, and becomes more welcoming in the future. It doesn't make any active changes, but it changes the mindset of the members of Debian. These issues are not, of course, in any way restricted to Debian. Free software development in general suffers from them. (Disclaimer: I am a Debian developer since 1996. I am a supporter of the Debian-Women project. I am biased.)