GNOME Reaches Out to Women

Dominic Hargreaves writes "This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's Summer of Code program, yet none were from women. As a result, they've decided to address this imbalance by launching an outreach program to sponsor three female students to work on GNOME-related projects this summer." Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?

Women and Linux - My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Women make up 51 percent of the population, and because of this, Linux
should be banned in government. Operating Systems like Linux discriminate
against women because of a built in difficulty compared with Windows and
Apple's OS X.

Women pay taxes, and therefore shouldn't be discriminated against in
getting employment with government agencies. If these agencies had used
Windows or OS X, more women would be able to persue dreams of a full time
job in government. Linux is by its nature a man's domain. Women are
designed to use social interaction and emotions to deal with complex
tasks, things the command line are ill suited.

  OS X, and Windows have
friendly and female-intuitive designs that take into account a woman's
understanding of objects,ie. folders, desktops, Clippy, the XP search dog.
  These help women operate the computer by giving her a relationship with
these icons, and helpful animated pets. It makes a woman feel at home
with her computer by allowing her to relate to it.

Linux, on the other hand is designed for command line and programming.
Sure, it may have a fugly GUI to hide its true being, but to get any
serious work done you must know a bunch of archane commands with hundreds
of options that change with every command. Something like this: chmod
a+rwx. Only enginners can understand this. And most engineers are still
men. This puts the female population at a great disadvantage when
appliying for work. Men know this, and that's why they delibratly try to
install linux in the workplace.

How would womens groups react when they read the studies that are being
commissioned by industry on this very subject? Surely, women, when they
learn of this, will outvote men and ban linux from the government.

most women are cleanfreaks

[Fry-kun]

..that's why they prefer KDE

me sexist? that's unpossible!

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[WilliamSChips]

In my experience, Clippy has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Women don't know about linux...

[a_greer2005]

because Linux users dont have girlfriends!

(ducks)

hmmm

[QAChaos]

I play a 16 year old girl on irc - does that count?

Big Deal

[mgabrys_sf]

I reach out to women all the time.

It's them letting me touch them that's the hard part.

Re:Is this for the benefit of the project...

[Rahga]

As a developer on a gnome project, I can tell you bluntly that additional women would help. Additional men would help. Heck, additional crack smoking monkeys would even come in handy, as long as they could tell the difference beween a semaphore and a banana*.

[*]The semaphore and banana requirement also applies to women.

Re:Big Deal

[slashflood]

I reach out to women all the time. It's them letting me touch them that's the hard part.

Feel free and reach out [flickr.com]

It's a great idea

[MrCawfee]

Can you imagine how bad it would smell if 188 geeks were in the same place?

Having a woman may convince 25% of them to take a shower.

Sadly those 25% are going to be the ones who already have the ability to get a girl, and they'd smell the best in the first place.

Oh I get it

[teslatug]

They'll get some girls to pose for the wallpapers right :)

Irony

[zandermander]

Does anyone else see irony in an article where there is an apparent attempt to bring more women into the OSS community being tagged "Gnome, Chicks, Women"?
Oh, wait - I just reloaded the page and the "Chicks" tag is now gone!
Guess that means I'm not the only one who noticed...

womans perspect on 'tiny fat fingers reaching out'

[Magdalene]

a girlfriend of mine told me not to get involved with that little Gnome leprechaun, apparantly one drink, one rohypnol and she ended naked chained to a python with a hell of a VI headache in the morning, and the only thing he left in the room were a bunch of old 'getting the best out of visual basic 1.0' manuals... little rat b4stard.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[faraway]

I was going to say; the command line can let you express feelings. But then I caught myself. The only feelings I could express at the command line were male feelings after all. unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep -- More proof Linux is sexist!

Re:Of course it's sexist

[freakmn]

I have some anecdotal evidence to support that claim. A (straight, male) friend of my brother tried to apply at a place such as you mention. This franchise hires almost exclusively women, and when he went in and asked for an application, they refused to even give him one. It is for this reason that I am boycotting this store. The next time I need some new undergarments, I will not go into Victoria's Secret. I suppose that it doesn't hurt them much, as I never shopped there anyway. Perhaps my actions will inspire others, where it might hurt their bottom line.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[t-twisted]

There are female ones, too...
pkginfo | less
pkginfo -l | more
fuser
pkgadd
pkgrm
pkgadd
pkgrm
pkgadd
pkgrm
iostat
split
reboot -- -s

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[jd]

Absurd! It's been an invaluable tool for interrogating terrorist suspects. Five minutes with clippy, and they'll talk for a week! Nonstop, in some cases.

This is appalling!

[binarybum]

What they really should have done to garner support is a swimsuit calendar featuring women coders.

  Just kidding! hahahah.

  what they really should do is a swimsuit calendar with gorgeous models pretending to be women coders!

If I've offended female /.'s, I'm sorry to both of you; it was a utilitarian jab I felt worth taking.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[70Bang]

You are obviously unaware of simple Microsoft trivia/history. (which might be a very good thing)

The program manager of Microsoft Bob was Melinda French, who we now know to be Mrs. William Henry Gates, III.

Microsoft Bob's progeny includes Clippy. Clippy may not have any direct redeeming features, but something important/notable has occurred in his family history.

____________________________

Gates has defined his exit strategy. Why can't Bush?

Disneymetrics

[nick_davison]

Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?

As even the most basic scholar of Disney can tell you, there's almost always a ratio of one woman to every seven gnomes.

Of course, Smurfologists would argue the situation's even worse. No wonder the little buggers are blue.

Re: Of course it's sexist

[Black Parrot]

> You would get some mod points if I had them, alas, they expired yesterday. Very insightful post.

We need a plan to help people who don't have mod points!

Re:Who cares?

[rtaylor]

Actually, there's lots of stuff being done by nursing schools to bring in male students. Partly to address the nursing shortage, and partly to achieve gender equity (or at least get closer to it) just for the sake of doing it.
And the real reason, more staff capable of moving fat patients. As the general population gets larger, so must the carrying capacity of the average nurse.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[Chowderbags]

"It looks like you're attempting inhumane and degrading treatment. Would you like to:

Learn how to evade international treaties against torture?

Learn proper engineering techniques for forming a naked pyramid out of prisoners?

Learn Islamic culture, the better to disrespect it?

No thanks, I don't need help."

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[Gli7ch]

Pfft. Almost had me for a second there.

There're no women on the internet! Everyone knows that! It's the place where men are men, women are men, and children are fbi agents.

Whee!

[WWWWolf]

Thanks, Slashdot, for getting to the 21st century and updating the GNOME icon. =)

As for the topic... um, I have nothing against the idea, and it's a pretty good one. Just be careful not to hire Paula [thedailywtf.com], who's undoubtedly out of work right now. =)

Re:Is this for the benefit of the project...

[jcinnamond]

[*]The semaphore and banana requirement also applies to women.

Why are men exempt from the semaphore and banana requirement?

Re:Is this for the benefit of the project...

[Carewolf]

As a KDE developer, I can tell you bluntly that GNOME should seriously cut down on the crack-smoking monkeys, they have too much influence on your desktop.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[sl4shd0rk]

In light of your incredibly keen insight, I have decided to have a sex change to do my part to increase the number of women working on open source projects. All males between the ages of 19 - 45 should be replaced by women and minorities to keep reality in step with marketing.

Re:Women and Linux - My Experience

[euphony]

The title is 'Gnome outreach for women'. It's not Linux that drives women away. Women just don't like Gnome. Doesn't match up to their aethetic standard. screen+emacs make the most efficient working enviroment.

Re:Women don't know about linux...

[mamer-retrogamer]

Most women that I've talked to are convinced that all techie guys are ugly, overweight, unwashed 30-year-old nerds who sit in their parents' basement and look at porn.

Actually, I'm an ugly, skinny, unshaven 29-year-old sitting in my mom's basement and replying to a Slashdot post... but point taken.