You can start a software shop on a $0 budget, but you will only get volunteers.

Well, let's revise that, you need your domain name, website, incorporation papers, and contracts with your volunteers. It's not $0, but it's not several thousand either. I've offered some of my free time to a group doing this; though it took some convincing from me that getting a proper contract written up was infinitely safer for them. Everyone just offers their free time, and the project gets built; end result is getting everyone involved to have some share in learning the ropes of the industry without the gigantic risks and investment of starting a development house with no product in sight.

Chances are, if I can get my video game design to the point where I feel it would make a viable demo, I'll probably use the same model and offer future profit percentages for folks to handle the stuff that I don't do well (HCI, pretty models and textures, story, etc). Who knows if it will work, but incorporation is only about $100 here, and a visit with a lawyer to draw up a boilerplate contract is about the same.

The difference is, the group I'm working with, and my future project, both have a target audience and a goal in mind (i think, anyways). The OP doesn't elaborate on points like that enough for me to feel confident that they know what they want to develop or who it's for; questions like "should I allow multiple languages" would be dictated by what product you make. OS driver software: write in C. User interface for someone else's code: write in any language that the devs like that will link to the other code. Video game? Write your engine in your choice language (or your engine's languages of choice), and if you need some script-able stuff for your world developers then throw in a link for Lua or Boo or something high level. Statistical stuff? R and SQL. The target audience sometimes defines the answers to the OPs questions.

Bull, all of those businesses listed have "sales" and "customers". They survived the period where they did not have enough sales on VC and angel funding, loans, and lots of debt where needed. But once they grew past that, once they shifted from "projects" into "businesses", they had customers. We, the average users, are not their customers. We don't pay them anything. Ad agencies pay them, big companies pay them, or buy them out-right. Those are their customers; they are the ones who keep the lights on in the buildings. So in the end, once they became profitable, they've fallen back into that truth about business.

Want to know who their customers are? Go through their stock filings and look at who is paying them. Few of the ones listed are still running on VC and debt.

As much as I would like to agree with that, I can't. I'm sure some of those who can only vent their frustration through threats of violence have other problems; we can notice those. We can treat them like human beings, but that does mean hearing their threats, and treating them like threats. If I went into a fast food restaurant, my order was taken wrong, and I vented my spleen in the manner that has been occurring in the gamergate movement or in any random video game then I would be arrested at best. If I decided that "McDonalds is killing the fast food industry" and threatened to rape and kill every female worker there, I'd be locked up for 72 hours minimum on a 5150-type law followed by assault charges. Just because it's done anonymously online does not change that assault is defined most places as "verbal announcement of intent to do harm, with the apparent ability to follow through on the threat." In said fastfood situation, I could not simply refuse to tell the police my name, or use a nom de plume to avoid responsibility for actual threats. Mind you, this isn't a 1st Amendment issue in the USA, the courts have already defined assault; one troll taken down on an assault charge or a 72-hour psych eval would help both parties involved.

Not every threat needs to be heard like this, I don't think the random "I'm gonna cap you" in an FPS game is out of place; one can do that in the fantasy of the game. Once the threat jumps out of the game, though, and make's its way to someones door we need to take it seriously and respond to it.

I asked who you believed was behind the propaganda wars, and you deflect. "The media" is not a group of people, if you wish to claim that there is a manufactured agitprop war going on, have the guts to name those you believe are behind it, or the tin foil to blame it on the Illuminati.

You redefine discrimination to include the trolling that this article specifies focuses on tech areas of employment, and then claim that since it's just discrimination, there must be other reasons women avoid IT since women are discriminated against in other fields.

If you just want to define the terms in a way that suits only your argument, and accuse any other interpretation of terms as "strawmen arguments", then neither of us will gain any enlightenment from this discourse. We both appear to agree that women are discriminated against; I had hoped I could see where you thought this propaganda was coming from (no, "the media" is not a place, it's the plural of medium. Who? The NYT, The Post, The Koch Bros, CNN, who?) and whether you felt women were gaining from it or being harmed by it (look at the other posts that claim "the media is helping these women, and making them targets for the trolls at the same time"). Instead, I'll admit, oxygen starvation couldn't hurt my brain cells any more than this discussion with you already has. When you have finished defining your terms, so that discrimination means "everything that happens" and women avoid IT because of every one of them knowing how to balance work/free time instinctively the way you do, and the goal posts have finished moving, then I'll discuss this with you or someone else again.

Or, you can treat my inquiries as they are, answer them, and have a discussion sans insults.

Go back to the first post I responded to: #48360665. See your second sentence? Are you suggesting that this propaganda war is not run by women, and is run by . . . who, men? Little grey aliens? If you are truly suggesting that the "propaganda war which attempts to perpetuate and inflate stereotypes of the oppressed women and abusive man." (your words, see post above) is promoted by some cabal of both men and women, and that I misconstrued your post to infer that this "propaganda war" was somehow women-led, then we can discuss that.

As for my second "strawman" that the abuse and harassment keeps women out of the tech field; are you obtuse enough to believe that the only reason women don't enter the field is the prescience and universal self-knowledge to know that the eventual desire to start a family will interfere with their career advancement? I do not disagree that some women avoid the field for that reason. Some avoid it because they know they want to start a family. But others enter the field and are scared off by the 'boy's club" mentality and the constant threat of "you'll never get promoted because you might, maybe, eventually decide to take 9 months off". Doesn't appear to be a strawman at all, as I can cite individuals and your side of the argument seems to be (from your post) that "women avoid the tech field for a whole lot of other reasons, so harassment can't be all that bad."

No, you suggest that men take these threats and ignore them, while women get upset by them. I suggest that no matter who the target of the threat is, the threat itself should upset all of us. A patriarchial statement would be to accept that women get upset by these threats, but that men targeted by them should "man up"; something that I will not do.

A person's response to a threat against them is their own to deal with; not yours or mine. I am upset by the fact that these threats get made at all, but I won't tell someone else how they should deal with them. Unlike . . .

I did not stand up this strawman, I restated your opening argument. To wit:

followed by

So, as I said, the trolls do exist and it is not a stretch to say that the entire gamergate issue has scared women away from speaking out; yet you argue that it's a strawman?

Add to that your obvious ad hominem attacks on me . . . you must be a very skilled opponent in rhetoric and logic to miss the obvious flaws in your own statements. I, as a woman, should feel honored that you deigned to pick apart the obvious flaws in my argument in such a skillful way.

I see; first you whine about being called a misogynist, then you argue that all the lies don't need to be explained because someone else explained them, and throw in a misogynistic insult, then you run and hide when pushed to defend your position. You get to walk away feeling like you won, because "obviously" I should do my research on youtube . . .

Wait, why the hell should I research YOUR OPINION on youtube when you have thus far refused to even state what your opinion is except "feminist lies and crap"?

I asked a specific question:

To which you don't even offer a reply.

You chose to only address my second issue of confusing women and "feminists", which you suggest I was adding to the confusion of?

Either answer the question of what lies you speak out against and get called a misogynist for, or STFD, STFU, & HAND. With no examples, all you are doing is digging the hole deeper by the intended ad hominem against me that I should "go and grovel before mistress".

Which feminist lies are you speaking out against? "All of them"?

Secondly, you are making the mistake of implying that all women who want some social equality are somehow related to the fantasy charactures of "Feminazis" that get thrown around so often. But, if your point is "speaking out against women arguing for quality if as misogynistic as speaking out against a political movement is racist" then I think your logic has a flaw already.

So, is the "feminist's lies and crap" a specific example, or just something "all SJWs" repeat?

No. They don't.

Threats are threats. Period, full-stop. If that's the only way someone can think of to vent their frustration, then there are a number of diagnoses in the DSM that should be applied via 5150 if necessary.

Once the world can come to an agreement on that, then we can have a rational discussion. As long as threats are justified and ignored because "it's just trolls or people venting frustration" there there is no discussion; the defense of threats is wrong.

So . . . what? That makes it okay, because it wasn't a real threat of violence?

It should never have been about ZQ's ethics and morals, but that's what no one inside GG will admit. The chain of events, witnessed from my perspective were:

-1) Sarkisian tries to make a documentary about how misogynistic game culture can be
0) shit storm occurs because "this is ruining gaming" and "we need to destroy this crap"
1) Dev writes game
2) shit storm occurs because "this is ruining gaming" and "we need to destroy this crap"
2) Dev gets game reviewed
2) shit storm occurs because "this is ruining gaming" and "we need to destroy this crap"
5) Dev dates reviewer? (I'm not sure the person she dated was the person who reviewed the game, just someone at the same game site. could be wrong)
6) Somehow make this about the Dev and not the journalist's lack of ethics...
7) Scream how everything is about ethics, but only the ethics of the women involved and not the journalists.
8) Scream at every woman who speaks up about this, and ignore the men who say anything (compare the response that Chris Klewe got to what Felicia Day got versus what they said)

That's closer to the actual timeline of events. Yes, step 2 is there multiple times because the "how did this get on steam greenlight" and "how did this get greenlit" are both basically the same thing and it all happened in a fairly ambiguous manner.

But no one who is convinced this is about ethics will believe this. I'll be shouted down as "uninformed" or "a SJW troll" or "just focusing on the bad parts of the GG movement". Let's face it, "GG is about ethics" people, you've hitched up with a crowd you thought was fighting for something and you bought into the movement. You can't find the stuff that happened early because, as others complained, reddit and 4chan said "this shit is crazy, get rid of it" so you believe only the stuff you've read by the people inside GG trying to convince you of what they are about. You have the choice to continue associating with the movement, denying the stuff that they did and that others associated with the movement are doing, or you could strike out on your own and actually complain about ethics in journalism. But that would require knowing that journalistic integrity doesn't apply to the people being interviewed or the developer of a game being reviewed but to the journalist instead. It would require acknowledging that ethics in game journalism is the least of the unethical journalism that's going on and there are bigger issues. But, if you want to go on claiming it's "just about game journalism ethics" then I'll go on discounting your opinion and encouraging others to do the same.

Unfortunately, there are people who do believe that. "SJWs" aka "Feminazis" are just code words for "woman with opinion I don't agree with" at this point.

Publicize a death threat? Men make those all the time in games, it's not like a real percentage has ever carried through on a random threat. Nevermind the number of sexual assaults, rapes, and murders by men who do make those threats in non-gaming environments. You don't need to fear our threats, obviously for reasons.

Leave your home out of fear? Pussy, no man would ever do that. See, let me man-splain this: men just make threats. We've never actually hit a woman except when she deserved it, and if you don't deserve it then you don't actually have to be afraid of us posting your address and making threats. It's just the way we greet people on the internet now days. You women are weak and pansy for using all of history to defend your fear of men actually tracking you down and killing or raping or just assaulting you for saying something we don't believe; that hasn't happened in the last few days and all of history before the internet isn't justification for your fear. Remember, internet = new world.

Don't be a misogynist when you are speaking. One can argue with a message cogently and coherently without coming across as misogynistic; perhaps understanding a bit of both sides of the argument, and it's history, might help.