gchaix

Who put containers in my Vagrant!?

I love this attitude: "the Bureau will use public dollars to create the source code, so the public should have access to that creation." I wish more public sector agencies subscribed to this philosophy.

I'm excited about this project for several reasons. It's a totally open stack (Linux, Ganeti, Django, etc.), funded through a grant from Facebook based on code from Google and OSU OSL (including Google Code-In students). This is a great example of the open source community working together for the greater good.

I didn't really intend the blog post to start a discussion about whether this specific incident at ApacheCon is legally-defined as "assault" or "battery" or "sexual abuse" or "harassment" or "insert legal term here". That's not really the point. You're right - it was a badly-worded sentence that I should have spent more time wordsmithing it. Mea culpa. My intent was to say, "things like what apparently occurred in Atlanta should never be allowed to happen. We all know it, so let's move on to looking at the greater societal issues incidents like this serve to highlight."

This is an example of a systemic problem within our community that goes beyond a single incident. I invite you to step back a bit and take a look at the attitudes reflected in the day-to-day interaction within our community. Sexist comments and jokes are common. I've been told by more than one woman that she's had to use a gender-neutral or male handle on community IRC channels and fora in order to be taken seriously and/or avoid lewd demands for topless pictures. I've never seen this sort of thing happen elsewhere. The open source community is especially bad when compared to other professional communities. As I saw someone post this weekend, "this isn't the 1960's, we aren't in a Mad Men episode." Things that haven't been acceptable in more than 50 years still occur without comment in our community. I'm trying to shine a light on the problem in an attempt to encourage us to do better.

Sorry. I'm not a lawyer. I didn't phrase that sentence well. I had originally said "no means no" there, but felt that that was equally easy to misunderstand - we shouldn't be waiting until someone physically assaults a community member before we step in.

I struggled with several parts of the post trying to make the wording clear. You quite correctly found two of them.

I'm talking more about the cultural attitudes that are represented in the comments than I am about the actual event (since I wasn't there and don't want to wade into something I know little to nothing about). The comments, however, are indicative of what many people in our community seem to think is an acceptable attitude. That callous and insensitive attitude is what makes our community hostile to women.

I'm not just talking about conferences - although the alcohol-fueled hothouse atmosphere certainly exaggerates the issue - I'm talking about the entirety of the working environment. The mail lists, fora, IRC channels, etc. where hurtful or inappropriate behavior serves as a strong disincentive for women to join or continue to participate.

TomfTTB, I think you missed some of my points in the post. Let's see if I can clarify:

1) Codes of conduct - I'm talking about community covenants that come from the community and that have real teeth enforced by the community. This is not about whether an action is illegal and enforceable in court, it's about a community setting standards of behavior for its members and taking real action against people who violate them. I can think of numerous unethical or abusive actions that, while not illegal, could (and should) be included in a community code of conduct as worthy of censure.

2) Training - I'm not talking about some quick and shallow two hour seminar with a cheezy twenty minute "this is sexual harassment" video. Those are nearly worthless. I'm talking about the much longer intensive trainings offered for and by domestic violence/sexual assault service agencies. Trainings where we learn to see the culture of oppression and violence through the eyes of the people who have survived it. We're talking about changing a culture and its underlying frame of reference, not simply pointing at something and saying, "don't do that, it's bad."

3) Speaking out - my point was that we need to be better at speaking out for exactly the reason you described. We need to do more than just shout incoherently into the void. We need to be more deliberate regarding how we speak out. A quiet, one-on-one "dude, you can't say crap like that" to a peer or an "I'm sorry, but our community does not allow its members to behave in that manner. Please leave now," is more valuable and effective than a thousand blog comments. It's not a question of whether we speak out, but how we speak out.

Lastly, I'm not trying to make this into a "micro issue". I'm pointing out that the tech community is particularly hostile to women. Compared with the other communities I've worked with (primarily in the non-profit and education sectors), the tech community is shockingly bad.