Linux Foundation's report on diversity, equity, and inclusion in open source
lwn.net
lwn.net
When the question is "does the code work?" it doesn't matter what color the author's skin is, what they think about politics or religion, whom or what they indulge their physical needs with.
We used to think that was a good thing. I can't see how it became bad.
Math is math. A car is a car... there's nothing racial or sexist about a car, unless it fails to come with an adjustable seat.
The easiest visual instance of this can be photographic filters - Google's Pixel 6 emphasized better photos for people of Color, where other sensors/phones may not be correctly calibrated for PoC. This is a pretty minor instance but easily visualized.
AI that does facial recognition or facial identification has in the past had issues with the faces of non-white people. It isn't a result of a 'racist' programmer. It's just from the fact that most testing and the data sets of these softwares is lacking the necessary diversity. It is part of including more people in software engineering is to combat these issues.
There are already a multitude of cultures and peoples that contribute to Linux, it’s a worldwide phenomenon, not some US centric thing, and shouldn’t be subject to the social justice fad du jour.
The problem isn't objective reality, test scores, etc. The problem is that racism (and many other evils) persist in people's hearts. Only love and truth can overcome that problem.
I for one hold to the objective truth that "all men (and women) are created equal". Go put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Said another way, I think that a white, a black, and an Asian raised in the valley probably have a much less diverse cultural background than say, three whites from SF, Mississippi, and NYC.
But in that instance people would just complain it is too white and needs 'culture.'
I'm OK with the culture argument, as long as you don't just throw it behind racial lines, which does a huge disservice to everyone and makes a lot of not so nice assumptions.
A racist is the one who unnecessarily injects race into the conversation.
"36% have experienced some sort of stereotyping behavior based on perceived demographic characteristics.
17% experienced exclusionary behaviors occasionally or frequently.
Women, non-binary, LGBQ+, and people with disabilities were 2X as likely to have experienced threats of violence in the context of an open source project. Transgender respondents were 3X as likely.
People who do not feel welcome in open source are from disproportionately underrepresented groups."
Yet very few women have done any of this. I do acknowledge that in some communities like Python there are so many weird people (especially the hypocrites that say they are inclusive are often creepy and boorish politicians), but the Linux people have always been straightforward. No weirdness there.