

Debian Diversity Statement accepted - ibotty
http://mid.gmane.org/%3C20120603211849.GA14010%40roeckx.be%3E

======
jcurbo
For those that might be confused, the actual vote page is
<http://www.debian.org/vote/2012/vote_002> and goes into detail about what is
being voted on.

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...](http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/04/06/people-behind-debian-francesca-
ciceri-member-of-debian-press-publicity-teams/))

~~~
sciurus
If you care about the discussion that occurred before a voet was proposed, it
took place at <http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00048.html>

------
ibotty
quote:

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.

~~~
cookiecaper
At some point these things become so broad that they exclude any non-technical
discussion. If Debian welcomes everybody, they also welcome white
supremacists, nazis, murderers, hippies, polygamists, and other groups which
the West views as undesirable.

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.

~~~
sciurus
What part of "We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact
constructively with our community" did you miss?

~~~
cookiecaper
And who determines what represents a constructive interaction? Is it something
that upsets people? If so, doesn't that mean that Debian does _not_ respect
religious or ideological beliefs that are interpreted as threatening by the
mainstream WASP (as Debian is mainly comprised of WASP contributors)? If so,
what was the point of this statement, again?

~~~
sciurus
I believe the point is well-expressed at <http://lists.debian.org/debian-
project/2012/03/msg00061.html>

"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."

~~~
cookiecaper
And the given diversity statement certainly does not reflect any meaningful
definition of the "sort of behavior [Debian] is actively seeking out".

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.

~~~
sciurus
> the given diversity statement certainly does not reflect any meaningful
> definition of the "sort of behavior [Debian] is actively seeking out".

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>

------
SkyMarshal
I wonder if Debian is the only Linux distro prominently named after a woman.
The 'Deb' is from Debrah Lynn, Debian's founder's girlfriend (and Ian from the
founder, Ian Murdock).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#1993.E2.80.931998>

------
sciurus
From the FAQ:

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>

------
ta12121
What exactly was the motivation for this?

Was there actually a problem?

~~~
liw
There does not need to be a problem, it can be a good idea for a person or a
project to express their ideals and values anyway.

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.)

------
ciupicri
Related:
[http://www.osnews.com/story/26005/Women_in_IT_don_t_need_spe...](http://www.osnews.com/story/26005/Women_in_IT_don_t_need_special_treatment)

