Gentoo Women

yabbadabbadont · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject:

OMG! Cokehabit's avatar has changed! The Apocolypse is upon us...

(Ok, it is still D.B. but it was a shock to see a different one)
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Maedhros · Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:21 pm Post subject:

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Having watched this thread bounce to the top of the "today's posts" list all day, I think it's about time to say something here.

First let me say I'm a 40 year old man. This is also not a "no girls allowed" post by any means.

I'm willing to help anybody get any distro working if they ask nicely and if they're willing to try. Regardless of gender. I don't think that women are any less capable of doing intellectual things than men are. I train the programmers we get in my company, and the degree of motivation seems to drive success more than gender. We just get fewer female applicants. The one female programmer we have (out of 4 total) is junior but just as bright as anyone else, and MORE motivated than most juniors we get.

There's no marketing tactic to get women to use Gentoo, but there are also no special attractions to get men to use it. I think setting up some sort of program to get women involved is artificial, and somewhat akin to singles clubs putting signs out on street corners saying they need more of whatever demographic in their club. It's contrary to the stated purpose of the organization. Commercial software companies concentrate on demographics of the market they want to meet. These companies have marketing-driven sales. That is to say, somebody says "this sort of person is our target, they like this sort of thing, so we provide it and they will buy our product." That's why Open Source even happened, because the marketing-driven companies were not meeting the needs of the real community.

There are all sorts of distributions which market to specific demographics. Most distributions are focusing on an easier installation and more mainstream use, and a more mainstream desktop look. They tend to have default installers that give you a system with most of the features and most of the look of the latest Microsoft Windows OS. Frankly if I wanted that then I'd install Windows. It's easier and probably cheaper in the long run if you value your time. Gentoo is a do-it-yourself distribution. That's why I'm here. The other distros I was using kept trying to decide what I wanted, and the list of what they wanted kept diverging from what I actually want.

According to the web site, Gentoo is aimed at folks who want to design their own system. I'd be tickled if more women would want to do that and feel confident enough to try. However, I'm not interested in setting a trap to "catch a woman" who uses Linux, or lure anyone at all to a distribution that does not provide a real solution to their needs. We have to assume that anyone who wants to pick a distribution is smart enough to match his or her requirements and wants to the list of features that distribution claims. The best we can do is accurately portray the features and the goal and see who comes in. Anyone who is artificially lured into the community will not be happy because the things the distro offers will not be the things they really wanted.

That's not to say that we shouldn't improve tools to be easier to use. The stated goal of the site is choice, and that doesn't inherently mean difficulty. Gentoo's portage makes an impossible job into a manageable job, which is awesome. I have no criticism to that, but there's always a better way and someday someone will find it.

To close this up, I don't see anything especially sexist about this distribution or the people who post to this forum. If that's true, then the statistics quoted at the beginning of the thread mean that most women are just not so interested in the sort of things Gentoo gives them. Similar things could be said about the automotive service industry: How many female auto mechanics do you see? Maybe most women are just not interested in that.

PS:
The quest for market share is the primary cause of bloat in modern software. Well, here's a clue: Gentoo is free software. There's no market to compete for. There is enough interest in this distribution to keep the site lively, and the maintainers of the site willingly adjust their product to fit those requests which fit within the parameters of the distribution goals. That means the site is not static and the maintainers are not closed in their thinking. There's enough interest in what is offered here to make it worth maintaining, and adjusting it to fit some market that everyone else is also striving for will lose something more precious than the increased numbers would justify.

We HAVE women who use Gentoo and who post to the forum. They and any others are welcome to any help I know how to give. I would object just as strongly to any other marketing-driven adjustment of the distribution.

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

We can sit on this thread and argue how well this may work and how well it may not for whatever reason. Bottom line is we'll never know until we try. This isn't a move to try and force women to use Gentoo, nor anyone else, but a move to try and make things more welcoming.

The comment on trolling/flaming is a good one, and we'll just have to hope that that kind of issue doesn't come up, but if it does, we'll deal with it then. Sit and plan for every little mishap, and you'll never get started. Remember the old addage:

"Think before you act, but don't think so long you forget to act"

I'm all for some action. I personally think that if we were to at least try, the only harm it could really do is waste time and energy, and I don't mind a waste for something that may do some good. Having a womans perspective is always a nice thing, since they think diffrently then males (that much should be obvious), and sometimes will hit upon something that a guy wouldn't have noticed before hand.

As for my LiveCD idea, I was thinking of something generalized to give someone a chance to try Gentoo, and not have to take a chance on ruining their PC. If you don't care for the idea, fine, then lets also remove the GUI installer (which never worked for me in the first place), and work on the docs for installation more.

SuSe/Red Hat/Mandrake are all good for new people. Personally, I owuldn't suggest Gentoo to anyone who is a total n00b, because its a pain to use at the start. The speed and configurability can be a bit overwhelming at times, and when somehting breaks, you have to post something and PRAY someone responds to give you an idea on what files are used to configure what.

Documentation is something that I see as needed. The guides to setting-up a GUI are minimal at best, and useless if something goes wrong. Trust me, mine didn't work and I had to spend days trying to get some help, which came from 1 person, who couldn't always give me rock-solid info even though I posted logs as well as some rather long helpfiles I had seen that I didn't see as very helpful or didn't understand. Man pages and Info pages are, while the best you can use right now, not very helpful in some cases. The layout is apauling, and just trying to figure out what the last string of 8+ character words means can be a taxing task.

I still say we need to start doing SOMETHING before everyone decides that this really isn't a good idea, or they find something better to do with their time.
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Fion · n00b Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 19

Maedhros & 1clue <----

I guess you're right. Maybe we shouldn't try to attract non-geek women into using Linux (via Gentoo) and instead focus on the geek girls recently bitten by the Gentoo-bug.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Fion · n00b Joined: 10 Jun 2006 Posts: 19

Syntaxis · Guru Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 511 Location: London, UK

sugar · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:27 am Post subject:

Reading this thread I realised that the whole thing is a good idea. Even if its just a inititive that states that there will be a certian number of female devs, and they will mentor a certian number of female devs, then its all good. There has to be a criteria where once, say, 1/4 of the devs are female, then the whole project is halted with conditions that it is able to perpetuate.

Get into the university and it will be easy!

I remeber going to my local lug, and there was one female in the room, who was assisting the presenter answer questions. I felt sorry for her because as soon as the presentation was over, there was a crowd of geeky guys basically cornering her asking her questions. She looked really uncomfortable the whole time.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Syntaxis · Guru Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 511 Location: London, UK

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

renrutal · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 1:59 am Post subject:

kashani · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 2:31 am Post subject:

http://www.flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf

Women make up 30% of software devs, but only 2% of FOSS devs. It's heavy on the academic speak, but interesting overall. Unfortunately I missed seeing Valerie Henson a Linux kernel dev at Intel present it last week.

kashani
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Zmyrgel · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:11 am Post subject:

Dralnu · Veteran Joined: 24 May 2006 Posts: 1919

R.I.P. · Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 12:13 pm Post subject:

Well, I think Gentoo For Women is not a good idea.

First, from what I can say using Gentoo for little more than two months as my main OS: Gentoo is a definitely for geeks.
And what is the difference geek distro and non-geek distro? I do not think this is kind of separation by minimum IQ to use it, or gender, or smth. Also I do not think it is strictly bound to complexity of usage/administrating/tweaking etc. The main difference imho is following: geek software/distro allows you to solve your problems and bring your ideas to reality by yourself. Geek fights thr problem by himself or fights with help of the others, non-geek looks for someone else to fight instead of him.

Ofcourse i think none of us is "The True Geek" from the ancient legends when "computers were big, harddrives were small, and if a man needed a driver for some device he wrote it". Though anyone here i think is less or more beyond the middle of the line between nongeek and geek. And if a woman or girl feel brave enough to be geek - welcome. Otherwise - there are plenty of other distros and OSes. Why someone should spend time for free to make Gentoo less geek for those who won't do anything to help theirselves?

PS Also such a title "Gentoo for smb/smth" resembles for me books like "Windows for Dummies"

PPS For things that are girlish but not related to geek-nongeek way-of-things (like girlish de/wm themes or girlish backgrounds) it is enough to have several threads in "Gentoo Chat" or "Off The Wall".

wouter · n00b Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 1

As this thread starts off by referring to Debian-Women, I feel a post about Debian-Women is in place.

Disclaimer: I am not involved in Gentoo in any way, except insofar that I maintain the Network Block Device upstream which happens to be in Gentoo (though outdated -- I'd appreciate it if someone were to update them, hint hint :wink:

). I am, however, a Debian Developer, and I'm reasonably familiar with the Debian-Women project, what their goals are, and why they're generally a good thing, not to be confused with 'Debian for Dummies'. OTOH, I'm not really involved with Debian-Women either; I have, for example, never actually posted on the debian-women mailinglist, or have done anything more than go to a talk where they've explained how they work and what they do. I also don't often follow Gentoo's development, but I just kind of stumbled upon this while randomly surfing.

Anyway.

First and foremost: Debian-Women does not exist because of any percieved idea that women would be less intelligent, or would have trouble understanding how Free Software works. On the contrary; there are women who wouldn't have joined Debian if not for Debian-Women that are so skilled and have so many abilities that I am in a way jealous as to what they can do.

Instead, there is a need for a -women project because the Free Software world traditionally is a male society. It is a scientifically proven fact that men and women work and behave differently; for example, when you put five men in a bar, each with a beer in their hands, chances are high that they'll turn around and openly start doing what I'll call a "meat examination": having a look at all the women in the bar, giving comments on their looks, sometimes giving score, and perhaps even giving comments like "I wouldn't mind a one-night with that blonde over there". They'll find this type of stuff incredibly funny, often laughing out loud. Women won't do such things; they will usually even find it offensive that they are being judged like that.

Of course this is just a stereotype; not all men behave like that. The point, however, is that men expose different behaviour, socially, when compared to women, to the point that it will turn women away because they either offend them, or because they do not understand the subtle rules that men know about men-only societies and think that a group of only man makes men 'behave strangely'. The offensive behaviour is not necessarily something that happens intentionally; never the less, it does happen and it does turn women away, including women who might otherwise be valuable contributors.

Especially given how Linux people are most often geeks, who often have issues with social behaviour, makes this a problem for women to understand how the society they're trying to contribute to, works.

In other words, the main reason for Debian-Women to exist is not to help Women with technical matters but to help them with social ones. Debian-Women helps women understand how the Debian project works on a social level, and helps them contribute. But it does not lower the bar in any way; any woman who wants to become a Debian Developer has to go through the same process, with the same rules, as a man who wants to do the same thing. I wouldn't want it any other way; and I'm sure the Debian-Women participants wouldn't, either.

Occasionally, Debian-Women is not, as one would expect, a women-only club. Everyone, men and women alike, is welcome on the mailinglist or on the IRC channel. The only "but" is that you have to follow the rules which are set for their channels; that is, no flaming, no sexist jokes, and other similar things.