Sam Varghese
Friday, 25 September 2009 07:56
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Open source consultant Kirrily Robert, who runs a blog called Geek Feminism, has taken Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to task over words he allegedly used in a talk given at a conference.
Shuttleworth was attending the LinuxCon, a conference of some 600 people, organised by the Linux Foundation in Portland, Oregon.
Robert has written
an open letter to Shuttleworth, pointing out that she "heard from multiple sources about your keynote, in which you referred to our work in Linux as being 'hard to explain to girls'."
She ends her letter with, "I'd like to invite you to think about the message you’re sending to women in the Linux community, and, if you didn’t mean to convey the message that we're technical illiterates and hard to educate, consider apologising publicly."
The letter has kicked off the usual firestorm of discussion; as I pointed out
some days back what is emerging, as usually happens in cases like this, is a point-scoring exercise.
Robert has not seen a video of the talk or listened to an audio but justifies her decision to send what I think is a highly patronising letter to Shuttleworth because "a number of people I trust were in the audience or watching it live (some of whom are bloggers here, or were on IRC or IM, and will probably comment), so let’s assume that their reactions are legitimate."
That's the best way to get a public figure to realise that he may have done something which was offensive - shout out loud and try to lecture him, before even examining the evidence.
Hearsay is the best way to find out about it. It would stand up in any court of justice.
