Eesh. Nothing? Not one good thing comes from encouraging a diversity of people?
> People should be judged for their character and merit,
Yeah, they should. But they're not. Because humans are inherently biased, even when they don't mean to be.
Nope, why would I want to be deliberately racist, sexist, or whatever else discriminatory? Why would doing so lead to anything good?
>Yeah, they should. But they're not. Because humans are inherently biased, even when they don't mean to be.
That isn't an excuse, though.
If we wanted to encourage diversity in the free software space, we should make sure every type of free software user feels welcome. Not just Linux users, but also BSD users, as well as folks who use Windows or MacOS but enjoy free software like Blender.
Of course, free software naturally has a greater appeal to tech-savvy computer users and software developers, which is a group that is overrepresented by Americans, English speakers, men and white people, mostly due to economic reasons. But these characteristics have nothing to do with free software, and there is already a diverse range of viewpoints and user profiles within the free software space.
In the open source world big tech are trying to use the diversity as a way to cynically get representation for themselves. They hire people who hit their diversity quotas and then use them for open source outreach to get their voices amplified among the progressive minded who actually... write all that open source.
The people who would be pushed as candidates for open source boards (e.g. black people doing dev outreach for Microsoft/Google) are blameless (they need a job!) but they are still being used by rich white men to serve a mostly corporate agenda.
This isnt to say that we dont need more diversity, just that we should recognize when the shallow appearance of diversity is being cynically used as a corporate and political weapon by elites to push a regressive agenda.
This strategy is very similar to the one employed by one of the most racist countries on earth, although theyre more blatant and less implicit about their accusations. The strategy works very well, too - progressive minded people can be easily manipulated through guilt.
Through the 1960's, the majority of computer science jobs were held by women[1].
Your worldview is not compatible with reality.
This.
You can even trace when it happened by clustering the awards given to Margaret Hamilton:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_...
Three in the 47 years between 1969 and 2016, Eight in the 7 years between 2016 and now.
The tech industry was built by women, then had their jobs stolen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/19/women-buil...
The problem is that today the supposed CS skills are atrocious. Most self called "engineers" would be laughed at the rest of the world. And, if they dared to stay in an actual engineering job in Europe (with civil accountability) without a proper degree, they would end in jail if something really bad happened. Literally.
If this is "diverse" as in the political sense, I am glad RMS passively blocked them. Nothing good comes from pursuing "diversity".
And before anyone calls me a white supremacist: I'm Japanese, specifically a Japanese-American not that that should mean anything. People should be judged for their character and merit, not what color their skin is or whether they have a vajayjay or whether they exhibit rightspeak.