Debian Diversity Statement accepted
mid.gmane.org
mid.gmane.org
I don't think Debian has a problem with diversity; as an example, the Debian Women group has been around since 2004: http://women.debian.org/home/ Maybe this is more about getting non-programmer/sysadmin types involved in Debian. (There's an interesting interview with the proposer, Francesca Ciceri, here: http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/04/06/people-behind-debian-fr...)
The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.
No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community.
While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we value and encourage contributions from those with expertise in other areas, and welcome them into our community.
> The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.
> We are committed to being a community that everyone feels good about joining. Although we may not be able to satisty everyone, we will always work to treat everyone well.
> Whenever any participant has made a mistake, we expect them to take responsibility for it. If someone has been harmed or offended, it is our responsibility to listen carefully and respectfully, and do our best to right the wrong.
> Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honour diversity in age, culture, ethnicity, genotype, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, neurotype, phenotype, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, subculture and technical ability.
> Ideas and wording for this statement were based on diversity statements from the Ubuntu community <http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/diversity>, the Python community <http://www.python.org/community/diversity>; and Dreamwidth Studios <http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity>.
> This document is usable under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA license.
Under a literal interpretation of their statement, I can make practically any statement and any ostracization would violate their listed principles. What if I say I engage in sending 1000 spam emails to the Debian list every day, and that I believe this will make God happy with me? Debian will be contradicting their statement if they do violence to my spam messages, because they will not be respectful of my religion.
Here's a less disruptive scenario in terms of the ability for the list to function: What if I believe it is my religious responsiblity to broadcast the message "God Hates Fags" to the Debian list, as the WBC in the US believes it is their religious responsibility to broadcast this message to the US populous via street protests? Debian would contradict their statement if any ostracization occurred on their list, if my messages were banned, if I were asked to change my sig, or if any other direct negative consequence was perpetrated or assisted by a Debian developer because of my post.
If Hans Reiser ever writes a Debian list, I expect him to be treated like any other contributor based on that statement.
What is this supposed to mean or solve? I don't really get it. If the intention is to stop any politically incorrect speech, a literal reading of that statement surely does not do so. Why do we want to stop all politically incorrect speech in the first place?
EDIT: Note, this has been edited. Some upvoters may have upvoted when less incendiary language was in use.
"You can't have an open and welcoming environment if you're open to people who work to make the environment non-welcoming to others. It is, like most things in life, a balance.
There's an old saying: the problem with an open mind is that people throw all kinds of crap into it. Neither one's mind nor one's community should be too open. Inclusivity does mean telling people who are not willing to allow others to be included that they should find a different project to be part of.
The point of a diversity statement is not to accept all behavior of any kind. It's to make a positive statement about what sort of behavior we're actively seeking out and want to align ourselves with."
Do you not see the contradiction in the message you quoted?
>Inclusivity does mean telling people who are not willing to allow others to be included [to leave].
This is self-contradictory unless there is no party that is "not willing to allow others to be included". You necessarily exclude someone. Is the line then, "We allow anyone who is not actively trying to get us to disallow someone else?" And if so, wouldn't that make anyone pointing out WBC-esque signatures an excluder who would have to be excluded to remain ideologically sound? What about people who are not specifically trying to exclude people? What if they say saying "God is OK with [group I dislike] contributing to Debian, but that group is still evil"? Is this tantamount to exclusion because it makes the individual feel ostracized, and if so, how do we tell when a statement is sufficiently likely to cause a feeling of ostracization in a person such that we have to stop it?
What about divisive political issues? Surely there are Debian contributors who oppose gay marriage on primarily religious grounds and surely there are Debian contributors who support it. Wouldn't any advocacy of either position be "non-welcoming" to some significant and contributory group? Isn't saying, "Yeah, but people who [oppose|support] gay marriage are not worth my energy anyway" exclusive?
The statement is so broad that it means nothing.
Sure it does. The project seeks behavior that welcomes others. You might even say that Debian is encouraging Ubuntu [0] from its contributors. :-)
[0] which as a philosophy has been summarized as "humanity towards others", and as a linux distribution has a code of conduct that asks members to "Be respectful. The Ubuntu community and its members treat one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to Ubuntu. We may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. We expect members of the Ubuntu community to be respectful when dealing with other contributors as well as with people outside the Ubuntu project and with users of Ubuntu." - http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/conduct
My question is more interesting because the situation that I describe is far more likely. (It's almost a certainty.)
Q: What is a diversity statement?
A: A diversity statement is a document expliciting something really important: that everyone (regardless of whatever thing people may usually be discriminated for) is welcome to join our project.
Q: Which will be the consequences of adopting it?
A: A diversity statement is not a Code of Conduct. We are not adding new rules. As Russ Allbery said [4]: "It's a statement of ideals. Statements of ideals don't generally change things in the way that, oh, code or even enforced policies change things. The influence is at best subtle. But I think statements of ideals are useful things to have because they help people think about ideals, and remember that the ideals are important, and that we can all do something to live up to those ideals. And that that can be as significant of an action as fixing a technical bug."
Q: What about hateful ideologies? Do we welcome them as well?
A: Here the relevant bit is: "We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community". In addition, let me borrow again some words from Russ [5]: "The point of a diversity statement is not to accept all behavior of any kind. It's to make a positive statement about what sort of behavior we're actively seeking out and want to align".
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00060.html
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00061.html
Was there actually a problem?
That said, Debian has very few female developers (1-2%?), and is generally skewed towards white, ethnically European males who are sysadmins or programmers and who mainly work on packaging software. See for example the group photos from the yearly Debian conference (debconf.org).
There's room for a lot more diversity: various genders; ethnic backgrounds; technical interests and skills; lingistic, social and cultural backgrounds; personalities; etc. There is fairly little overt rejection of those who are different from the majority of Debian developers, but there is definitely some inadvertent systemic preference to recruit more of the same.
I don't know about recent intentional pressure to exclude those who divert from the traditional mainstream: I am a privileged white European male, I would not even notice if someone else does not feel welcome for whatever reason. I would like to notice, and I would like everyone to be welcome.
The diversity statement is one step in making sure Debian is welcoming, and becomes more welcoming in the future. It doesn't make any active changes, but it changes the mindset of the members of Debian.
These issues are not, of course, in any way restricted to Debian. Free software development in general suffers from them.
(Disclaimer: I am a Debian developer since 1996. I am a supporter of the Debian-Women project. I am biased.)