I think my issue is the way in which people like yourself seem to have picked up on the speech and hoisted the flag, of your own accord, apparently on behalf of women, who apparently can't stand up for themselves?!

Now, I don't think that men are better than women at math – indeed your own stats use such a small sample as to be totally irrelevant either way… indeed I think the figures are that women are better at math and have on average a higher IQ, by a slightly higher margin than the one you quote.

One of your arguments seems to be that the community is missing out on a potential talent pool. I don't think it is, I think the pool has a mind of it's own and it's mind generally isn't interested in becoming a geek.

"The idea is that many women *want* to be involved…"

Really .. "women" .. all women ? .. and you've spoken to them all ?

Seriously, can we leave this as your opinion and not take it as a statement of fact. There are already far too many men telling Women what Women want … I would *love* to talk to someone who has decided not to involve themselves with computers / programming because they've heard someone within the community say something they consider to be sexist and been sufficiently offended to chose another career .. please, we could have a very interesting albeit short conversation. Women really aren't [generally] as weak / stupid as some of your comments seem to imply.

>But if there were more women in open source software, it would be easier for women to get involved …

Yes, I agree 100%, it would be easier.
The a change in level of difficulty however, IMHO, would have very little impact on that 2%, if you think it would have an impact, I would love to hear "how". Being honest, anyone who gives up THAT easily, how long are they going to last and exactly how useful are they going to be?

>I don't think men have a special aptitude for watching football or writing computer programs

Mmm, watching football is not a skill or a talent, it's a waste of time, and once the context is changed you will realise that this IS something men have a special aptitude for. As far as writing computer programs goes, it's something [relatively speaking] very few people have a talent for (men or women) and IMHO, it's something Women could / can do very well, but often have no interest in doing. I guess in much the same way that men generally have little or no interest in reading Jane Austen.

"annie linux." ::

So, you once pretended to be female and found out how females were treated in the anonymous world of on-line gaming, please "get real". Firstly, it's a minority of ignorant rednecks who talk this way, and typically they're spotty kids who really don't know what a woman is. Secondly, there are MUCH bigger problems visible in such arenas .. as people think (and often rightly so) that what they say is totally anonymous, racist views will often come into play – and in many instances these are comments from more mature players. Frankly some of the things I hear are scary, sometimes people only have to sound black to get an on-line death threat.

>If I were a women …

Yeeeessssss… and there's the rub – you're not .. are you [?]

In which case, do you not think your comments about "what women want" to be a little out of place?

I don't think men have a special aptitude for watching football or writing computer programs, and in fact, it's a great detriment to our community that some women may have great potential at writing code which is never realized because they are discouraged from doing so.

For example, it is statistically true that men are better at math than women. However, the difference is so small that it would be unnoticeable in everyday society. It would mean that out of a 10,000 mathematicians, maybe 4,999 are women, and 5,001 are men. So why is it that in reality those numbers are more like 1,000 women to every 9,000 men? Because people believe that women are worse at math, a lot worse, and so teachers treat women differently at an early age. As time goes by, women are discouraged from learning math because it's for boys, and so they pursue other careers, even if they might actually be better mathematicians than whatever else they do.

In the end, it's our loss if there are potentially amazing contributors to the (F)OSS community who will never get involved.

"If a certain number of women want to be involved in Open Source, and that number makes up 2% of people involved, the implication of "wanting" more women to be involved is that you want to involve women who don't want to be involved … [??]"

The idea is that many women *want* to be involved, many more than the 2% who involved right now, but they go to a conference and look around the room and see no one like themselves, and then they go to a talk, and the speaker tells them that they need to "lose their EMACS virginity," or makes other degrading jokes targeted at them. Maybe, some women decide in the ends its worth putting up with these problems, but many do not. Instead, they say, I guess this is not for me afterall.

But if there were more women in open source software, it would be easier for women to get involved because there are more people like themselves. Likewise, if key leaders in the movement didn't make jokes at women's expense, then it would be easier to feel welcome and to feel like equal partners in the community.

"Most OS work and indeed communication tends (certainly in my case) to take place via the Internet .. so why would my gender make any difference as to whether I could become involved? .. in this instance for example, am I a man, or a woman ?"

This is an interesting and I think worthy point. However, the internet is not completely gender neutral. I am a man, but I used to play a video game online under the alias, "annie linux." The name was a bad play on words, changing the name of the singer "annie lennox." Most people did not get the joke and thought I was just some women named Annie who loved Linux. They would taunt me, suggesting that I do things like "suck their cock" or calling me a "bitch" every time I beat them at the game. If I were a women, I suppose I could always create a gender neutral alias, but that's hardly a level playing field, to suggest that women should have to hide their identities and pretend to be men so they won't suffer sexist epithets and abuse.

Men and Women are sometimes good at and have an aptitude for different things. One often finds that men and women tend to have different interests, different hobbies and different preferences. Just for example, my perception is that more men are interested in watching football than women. Should men strive to get more women interested in football ? .. or could it be that the women not interested in football, are not actually interested in becoming interested in football ? Personally I have no interest in football and do not welcome attempts to "get me interested".

If a certain number of women want to be involved in Open Source, and that number makes up 2% of people involved, the implication of "wanting" more women to be involved is that you want to involve women who don't want to be involved … [??]

If I thought it was difficult for Women to get involved with IT or Open Source, I'm sure I would be bothered by this , however in my experience, Women wanting to get involved will often get more help than men. Most OS work and indeed communication tends (certainly in my case) to take place via the Internet .. so why would my gender make any difference as to whether I could become involved? .. in this instance for example, am I a man, or a woman ?

All other issues aside, could you elaborate on this a little? I've absolutely no problem with seeing women involved in the Open Source movement, bit it seems you specifically to want to increase numbers – can you explain why?

Might you explain why that doesn't bother you?

Cheers,
Natan

2. You brought up the point that it might make more sense to design an alternative to .NET ourselves, but I don't think that's realistic or makes sense for three main reasons:

(A) .NET seems to be a very well designed framework (from the little that I've seen of it). I don't think it makes sense to try to come up with something new just because .NET "wasn't invented around here." Even if we tried, I'm not sure that we would succeed in creating as good of a product.

(B) .NET compatibility lets companies (e.g. Linden) switch to .NET without rewriting their code for a new framework.

(C) Having a Linux implementation of .NET makes it easier to port programs to Linux. Mono may help, for example, solve the common complaint that no games run on Linux.

In any event, thank you again for commenting- I thought that your reply was well thought and your point about "free software" not "open source" was particularly insightful.