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The article bounces around to touch so many different social issues its nearly incoherent. Regarding the main point I think it's a non issue. Companies are on

The article bounces around to touch so many different social issues its nearly incoherent. Regarding the main point I think it's a non issue. Companies are only interested in hiring OSS contributors to get a feel for their work. There are many other ways to do this. For example since a lot of my work is visual I maintain a demo reel. For others it may be articles you've written or even Stackoverflow contributions. It is not hard to get a job without OSS if you have some way to communicate your past performance. Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? I know women have a tough time in certain tech environments, but I'm really surprised to hear of repos where this is happening because perpetrators would have to do it publicly. Please provide examples of the largest OSS community where this is happening and where offenders are not called out or reprimanded. I'll be glad head over there and back you up.

Justsignedup 12y ago
Most harassment is public. - Twitter - Facebook - IRC - Twitch - Reddit - Real world (some wear hoods) Some are more anonymous, some less.
avsbst 12y ago
Notepad++, granted they were called out on it hence the apology: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sexist-jokes.html http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sex...
SrslyJosh 12y ago
Lucky for you that you can show your work to people outside of your company, right? > Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? Now you're being deliberately obtuse. Not everyone uses github, and not all communication happens through github.
- multiplicity 12y ago
  Keep in mind this is Ashe Dryden, who thinks being called a professional victim is misogynist. Paper-thin skin, but throwing stones from her glass house like there's no tomorrow. Open source's results-over-feelings approach turns off many, not just women.
- malandrew 12y ago
  I can't tell the gender of many people in opensource unless they use a username that indicates their gender. Looking at #thrift right now (a project I contribute to). I see 40 people not counting the channel bots. I count only 6 nicknames that suggest that they are likely to be men because they begin with names that are typically male names. The same is true for a lot of the github usernames I see. I wonder how of this self reporting by women who say they have trouble contributing because they are women is actual gender discrimination and how much is due to people who have grown accustomed to committing the fundamental attribution error [0] on themselves, instead of applying the rule of parsimony [1] and looking for alternative explanations that might better explain their difficulties. It's also important to apply Hanlon's Razor [2], "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.". Sometimes that stupidity (or ignorance) is the person rejecting your contributions, but it could also be your own stupidity (or ignorance). I have found that most people who try to contribute to open-source and fail have never read esr's classic "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" [3] If you eliminate all identifier's of gender by using non-gendered handles and initials for your first name in your git config, you can safely look for other explanations for your difficulties contributing to open-source besides your gender. It's called applying the scientific method. If you hypothesis is "I'm having trouble contributing to open-source because of my gender", you should obfuscate your gender in your contributions to control for that variable. Once you eliminate it as a possible confounding factor, you're free to come up with alternative hypotheses for your difficulties. Personally, I don't have my name, gender, or location on my github profile. It's a community for contributing code, so all such metadata is irrelevant. I'm genuinely curious what percentage of github users cannot be determined to be male or female (which is a figure the author did not cite). [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor [3] http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
peri 12y ago
I've posted about my personal experiences and how I've personally discouraged all sorts of contributors by ignorance in the past here on HN. For example, I re-submitted recently this blog post on a back and forth that I had with antirez: http://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html http://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html We were able to resolve that via some twitter messages and some time to let both of us calm down, but at the time I was ready to stop using redis, much less helping folks via bug reports and patches.

Justsignedup 12y ago

Most harassment is public. - Twitter - Facebook - IRC - Twitch - Reddit - Real world (some wear hoods) Some are more anonymous, some less.

avsbst 12y ago

Notepad++, granted they were called out on it hence the apology: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sexist-jokes.html http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/response-and-apology-4-sex...

SrslyJosh 12y ago

Lucky for you that you can show your work to people outside of your company, right? > Also the author says she knows "many" women who have had trouble contributing to OSS based on how they were treated. GitHub should make it easy to provide examples of this right? Now you're being deliberately obtuse. Not everyone uses github, and not all communication happens through github.

multiplicity 12y ago
Keep in mind this is Ashe Dryden, who thinks being called a professional victim is misogynist. Paper-thin skin, but throwing stones from her glass house like there's no tomorrow. Open source's results-over-feelings approach turns off many, not just women.
malandrew 12y ago
I can't tell the gender of many people in opensource unless they use a username that indicates their gender. Looking at #thrift right now (a project I contribute to). I see 40 people not counting the channel bots. I count only 6 nicknames that suggest that they are likely to be men because they begin with names that are typically male names. The same is true for a lot of the github usernames I see. I wonder how of this self reporting by women who say they have trouble contributing because they are women is actual gender discrimination and how much is due to people who have grown accustomed to committing the fundamental attribution error [0] on themselves, instead of applying the rule of parsimony [1] and looking for alternative explanations that might better explain their difficulties. It's also important to apply Hanlon's Razor [2], "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.". Sometimes that stupidity (or ignorance) is the person rejecting your contributions, but it could also be your own stupidity (or ignorance). I have found that most people who try to contribute to open-source and fail have never read esr's classic "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" [3] If you eliminate all identifier's of gender by using non-gendered handles and initials for your first name in your git config, you can safely look for other explanations for your difficulties contributing to open-source besides your gender. It's called applying the scientific method. If you hypothesis is "I'm having trouble contributing to open-source because of my gender", you should obfuscate your gender in your contributions to control for that variable. Once you eliminate it as a possible confounding factor, you're free to come up with alternative hypotheses for your difficulties. Personally, I don't have my name, gender, or location on my github profile. It's a community for contributing code, so all such metadata is irrelevant. I'm genuinely curious what percentage of github users cannot be determined to be male or female (which is a figure the author did not cite). [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor [3] http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

peri 12y ago

I've posted about my personal experiences and how I've personally discouraged all sorts of contributors by ignorance in the past here on HN. For example, I re-submitted recently this blog post on a back and forth that I had with antirez: http://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html http://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html We were able to resolve that via some twitter messages and some time to let both of us calm down, but at the time I was ready to stop using redis, much less helping folks via bug reports and patches.