[Linux-aus] An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Randall Crook]

Quoting Elspeth Thorne <elspeth at thorne.id.au>:

<snip> a lot of stuff that I would rather avoid as I have already said my
        piece on Melissa's blog.

> Actually, of my local spinners, weavers and fibre artists group (which
> incorporates knitters), approximately 8% of the membership are men.In
> the most recent meeting I attended, men made up 25% of the attendees.
> They're doing a lot better than my local LUG - and the cultural
> inhibition against men being involved in these sorts of things is, at
> least on the surface, higher than that for women in FOSS - so why the
> heck is my knitter's group doing so much better in terms of gender
> balance?

I have for the last few years indulged in two past times that a very heavily
slanted toward a female dominant demographic.

Email signature tagging and Teddy Bear Making. And quiet frankly I  
have *never*
been subject to any form of sexism in either. And I have *never* had any form
of derision from anybody about being involved these past times either. Seems
to me that there are a lot of people on this planet that are accepting of my
interests, which would seem to say that we are dealing of a minority group.

"A few bad apples" is what we are fighting and Melissa's Open letter spells
that out quite clearly. I took no offense in her stance or the way in which
she communicated it. I saw it as a request that we do not allow "A few bad
apples" to ruin the enjoyment of our community for any one of us. A simple and
worthy request I feel.

I may be reading the entire thing wrong.. I have done before.

Any way.. just my two cents worth..


<snip> see comment above. :)

-- 
Regards
Randall Crook
rcrook at vtown.com.au

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