Words are important. Devs will argue over a correct variable name for hours but think names in other places have no meaning
They are the ones advancing a narrative of exclusion, telling individuals in whole swaths that they can never compete in open source projects.
They have no evidence to support this of course, just what they were taught in their sociology classes at uni.
In reality though they are the ones pushing outdated bias.
Being a conspiracy theorist means you believe someone else is conspiring against you.
also, there's no need for the ad hominem attack. if he is a conspiracist, it should be easy to point out a more simple explanation.
Meritocracy is only an inappropriate word if you believe that certain groups of people will never be able to participate on a level playing field.
That notion is of course incredibly condescending towards members of those groups.
The goal should be to advance everyone in the meritocracy through outreach and training, not to abandon the value of meritocracy.
The proposal itself makes it clear the change is merely for cosmetic purposes, to make certain people feel better, not actually increase diversity.
If you care about diversity you should oppose the notion that certain groups of people are incapable of participating on their own terms.
This is about empowering a small but loud group of political activists who want to remake a software project to fit their fringe world view.
Do you care more about affirming their politics or the quality of software?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16406946
When people approached some of the FreeBSD Core Team with their concerns about vague language that could be subject to abuse, they were basically told they were all racist transphobes who weren't welcome to contribute to FreeBSD anyways.
So it was a pretty obvious politically-motivated power-grab.
Why am I feeling a sudden urge to read Animal Farm?
We can and should combat those aspects for sure, but we are also giving into another aspect of human nature: unchecked power and control, which will almost certainly lead to abuse. There is also no evidence that this will improve diversity.
It's just to make people feel good and put a few radicals in charge who want to dictate everything.