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Today the Southern California Linux Exposition's fifth iteration kicked off with all-day mini-conferences on free and open source software in the health care industry and women in the free/open source software community. Since the sessions on women seemed to be the less popular, least business-friendly, and most interesting of the two subjects, that was the series I decided to sit in on. It was a life-changing experience for all who attended.
The agenda
The subject of women in free/open source software is one that had not been previously explored in SCALE or other, similar conferences to date. Viewing its debut was, to say the least, an extrordinarily interesting experience. Most of the speakers were experienced in giving presentations of this kind, but had previously been the only or one of few female speakers at other free software conventions.
The entire schedule for this conference room dealt with some facet of the involvement of women in the world of free software development, which many have been led to believe is particularly male-dominated. As I learned, this myth is not necessarily true in all parts of the free software world.
Stormy Peters of OpenLogic, Inc. (formerly of Hewlett-Packard) kicked off the mini-conference by outlining all of the major issues that women face in contributing to free and open source software development. Quoting the FLOSS-POLS study in Europe, various Slashdot posts, blog entries, and VentureBeat, she explained that while indeed a minority of information technology workers were women (roughly 20%), an even more staggering minority -- to the tune of 1.5% -- of free software contributors were women. The reasons given for this disparity were many and mostly related to cultural roles and expectations for women in the western world. "Alpha dog" behavior, posturing, backbiting, and mysogyny were listed as common and unfortunate social habits among free software programmers, and throughout the day the issue of how to deal with this behavior was approached from several different angles.
Not only did the majority of the predominantly female attendance agree with Peters' compilations of data, but several had appalling stories about men behaving terribly toward them on free software mailing lists, in IRC channels, and indeed even in real life at Linux User Groups (LUGs). The tales ranged from slight comments to outwardly hostile things that drove them away from free software in general, and those projects in specific. One woman, close to tears, told a story of how she was turned away from her first LUG meeting because some jerk there told her that it was a Linux-related gathering, not a singles event. Unfortunately, in a trend that would pervade the entire mini-conference, the attendee refused to disclose which LUG had fostered such behavior.
Peters also went on to explain that women most frequently preferred to play non-programming roles in software development, opting to deal instead with such necessary issues as documentation and community support instead of raw coding.
Each 45-minute presentation thereafter built upon Peters' assertions in what turned out to be a brilliantly planned and organized program where every speaker and attendee was glad to participate.
Jean T. Anderson, an IBM employee and member of the Apache Software Foundation (specifically dealing with the Derby database) followed, informing attendees that unlike many free software projects, Apache was not about code, but about community. She outlined the most significant barriers to female free/open source software participation:
- Women frequently don't know how to get started with a project.
- They are afraid of looking stupid.
- They don't want to be flamed on the public mailing lists or IRC.
- The feel that they do not speak English well enough to participate.
- They are uncomfortable with publicly accessible and archived email lists.
- They are not comfortable "selling" their ideas to the group.
- Sexist jokes and demeaning comments create a negative atmosphere for women.
Anderson explained that these perceived barriers were mostly unfounded fears, myths, and cultural prejudices, and proceeded to explain that in practice, there were few things to fear, and that while the openness of free software could not be circumvented or avoided, anonymity was still available. Anderson charged us all to be intolerant of all comments on free software development IRC channels and mailing lists that demean women, reminding us that such behavior harms men as well as women. She also pointed out that in the meritocracy of free software, there is truly no glass ceiling for women like there is in other industries and professions. Secondly, it's possible to mask one's gender through the benefit of anonymity -- indeed, most of the female presenters had gender-neutral first names, and could easily maintain an air of mystique. Lastly, Anderson reiterated what Stormy Peters had said about cultural habits that imposed limitations on women, quoting the same FLOSS-POLS study that Peters had.
Strata R. Chalup followed with a session that had been intended to educate female attendees on the basics of open source software, but ended up being overwhelmed by a predominantly tech-savvy audience. Though several audience members were women who were very curious about GNU/Linux and free software but had been too afraid to explore it, they were met by a roughly equal number of women who were either active contributors, or who had mastered free software operating systems at home and/or at work.
Next up was former Debian project leader, current open source and Linux chief technologist for Agilent/HP, and president of Software in the Public Interest, Bdale Garbee. He may have been the only male speaker at the mini-conference, but what he said had a great deal of meaning. Garbee explained that it was not necessarily the fact that 98.5% of women did not want to contribute to free software projects -- it's that it is too frequently assumed that programming is the only way to contribute to such projects. He went on to provide outstanding guidelines for more positive interaction in free software development communities.
Marija Mikic-Rakic of Google, Inc. was the next speaker. Though she was only a replacement for a speaker who had to back out at the last minute, Mikic-Rakic did a fine job of establishing the work environment at Google and how it benefited women with services and policies that allowed them to fulfill their traditional cultural roles while still maintaining meaningful careers.
Last in the lineup was Dru Lavigne of the BSD Certification Group, who reminded the audience that information technology in general was interesting, not geeky; culture-oriented, not male-dominated; and had no glass ceiling because it was essentially a meritocracy. Lavigne revealed that of more than 1300 people who were interested in taking a BSD sysadmin certification exam, 1.5% -- the same percentage that FLOSS-POLS had found for total female participation in open source software projects -- were women. She continued by building upon the three earlier-presented ideas that empower and enable women to more easily participate in open source development: anonymity, meritocracy, and peer collaboration. This triumvirate causes people to ignore gender prejudices and concentrate instead on the content of one's contributions to the project.
All of the speakers shared one thing in common: they were gung-ho about getting both grown women and young girls into collaborative environments in the free software community. Dozens of suggestions were discussed, from female-oriented computer games and the Lego Mindstorms creative toy sets to the conscious removal of the common female stigma of being computer-savvy.
The day ended with a thoughtful but perhaps unrealistic panel discussion on how the world might change to better accommodate female contributors to free and open source software projects.
Resources for women in free software
Throughout the day, several Web resources were listed that reach out specifically to women in the free and open source software community, and in information technology in general:
Audience reaction
There were regularly between 20 and 40 attendees of each presentation, more than half of whom stayed for the entire series. One of those people was Beth Lynn Eicher, a system administrator for the Timesys Corporation.
"It was excellent, but I came with, I suppose... a little bit of fear that nobody was going to show up. I've dabbled with the idea of having similar thing at a conference that I run called the Ohio Linux Fest," she told me. "I absolutely feel inspired by this. I wondered for quite some time as to how I made the shift -- of being able to walk into this community and feel that I would be accepted rather than just sit down very shyly and figure that I wasn't going to be accepted. I now do feel like a welcomed member of this community."
When asked if she'd come back if another similar mini-conference on women in free software if it were offered next year, Beth said that she probably would. The primary reason for registering for SCALE 5x and making the cross-country trek was for this very topic.
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Copyright 2007 JEM Electronic Media, Inc. No reprints without written permission. |
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