Sam Varghese
Sunday, 14 March 2010 10:54
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
Ever since FSF chairman Richard Stallman was accused of making sexist remarks at the GNOME summit in Spain last year, the free and open source software community has indulged in much discussion about the proportion of women in the community and the reasons for the same.
If this wasn't reason enough for such discussions, they were fuelled by another incident later in the year, when Mark Shuttleworth, the head of the Ubuntu project, was accused of making similar remarks.
While the statistics cited in such discussions about women's participation are drawn from 2006 - they show that less than 2 percent of the community are women - one cannot escape the fact that the participation rate of women is still abysmally low.
Hence, when one hears of prominent women contributors making noises to indicate that they are unhappy with the way they are being treated in the FOSS community and saying they are reconsidering their involvement, it is a matter worth investigating.
In
a recent interview given to the Ubuntu community site, the fridge, Melissa Draper, who by her own admission has been part of the Ubuntu community for the last four years, had this to say:
"There's some odd politics going on and I've been pushed away from a few things within Ubuntu lately. It's a complicated matter and I feel like I'm left holding loose ends. I'm still trying to figure how where I stand with things. At this point, I intend to continue with Ubuntu Women as it's an important part of the community, regardless of what others think."
This was in response to a query as to where she saw herself going with Ubuntu and free software in general. Draper has also been involved with other FOSS groupings such as the Linux Chix and Linux Australia.
If there had been some sordid attempt to try and push Draper out of the Ubuntu community, the group which has congregated around the most widely used GNU/Linux distribution, then it was worth a story. But a little digging came up with something entirely different.
