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Could you be specific about what that "collection of gifts" is and how Postgres/OSS needlessly excludes people based on these gifts?

I listed a few: freedom, time and indulgence. More specifically, the freedom to pursue passion in life is often enabled by one's parents having enough money and stability. Time is mostly about leisure time. Having a job that supports work on open source is still not that common, so one is left with figuring out how to do this on your own time - and that depends on you actually having free time because you don't have kids, you only have one job, and you have the background knowledge (socially, tools-wise and background reading) necessary to participate.

So, that's how the whole world works, right? I am not saying that Postgres is unique here. I think we actually do a really great job. We have about 300 contributors every year, and only about 20 committers. That's impressive and shows how the contributors feel about our project. It is prestigious, interesting and fun enough for them to send us their code even though we don't give out commit access, and we subject everyone to a pretty difficult code review.

That just goes to show that if you ask a lot from people, they like it and come back for more. Or at least the people I want to be in a community with like it. :)

I am bringing up to my community that we could do a little better inside of Postgres. We could take a closer look at how we operate, and find ways of inviting people in that don't already fit our mold.

There isn't an easy solution to addressing privilege inside a community, at all. But I was at a conference last week, and a couple people asked me to write my thoughts down about meritocracy. It was not an easy thing for me to do.. I already see a few de-railing comments about gender.

But I continue to get support for thinking and writing about this issue, and ultimately finding more ways of getting more contributors. This is why I continue to contribute, and why I took a moment to make a gentle criticism of a community that I enjoy very much.

I'm confused. From your original post: And to say that a person can only contribute to an open source project if they have equivalent freedom, time and indulgence from society as our very most privileged members, is to exclude a great number of people – I’d say 99% of people – who are capable and would be wonderful additions to our community.

This seems to postulate that OSS excludes 99% of people who are capable of contributing good code. However:

...freedom, time and indulgence...the freedom to pursue passion in life is often enabled by one's parents having enough money and stability. Time is mostly about leisure time. Having a job that supports work on open source is still not that common, so one is left with figuring out how to do this on your own time - and that depends on you actually having free time because you don't have kids, you only have one job, and you have the background knowledge (socially, tools-wise and background reading) necessary to participate.

Now you are discussing people who don't have the free time or knowledge to contribute good code. How would such people be a wonderful addition to a community devoted to writing good code?

You've created a circular argument - if someone doesn't currently have free time or knowledge, how could they ever write good code?

re: free time - I didn't suggest any particular solutions, because the point of this exercise isn't for me to give everyone easy solutions to problems. But I'll offer you one:

More companies could offer time to their employees to work on open source projects. That's something the project itself can help lobby for, and can keep in mind when soliciting help.

That's not a new idea. Many others have said it, and many companies implement it.

I made no argument at all. I merely asked a question.

I prefer that mindset to one that assumes a link between privilege with ability.

I am not assuming it. I was merely pointing out that it could be the case, which I feel is relevant- especially because the author assumed there was no connection out of hand.

In my opinion, before trying to fix a system, you need to confirm it is actually broken. And by 'broken' I don't mean, 'not fair'- I mean, 'not doing what it's supposed to do'.

Excellent points. Also, in many environments, the standards about how different contributions are valued [and hence how ability is assessed] have been defined primarily by those with certain kinds of privilege -- one more reason to question biases about ability!