
Diversity and Discrimination in Open Source - jdkoeck
https://quillette.com/2018/06/26/diversity-and-discrimination-in-open-source/
======
MarkMc
Isn't it illegal in the US to offer internships based on race or gender?

~~~
ubernostrum
There are quite a few groups that place people into internships, and which
work to promote people of demographics whose presence in tech is currently
below what would be expected from the same demographics' share of the overall
population.

I suppose if you want to argue that should be illegal, or that it should be
illegal to use one of those places to source your interns, you can. But if you
do that, you take away the "pipeline problem" response so many companies like
to use to explain why they hire few/no female, black or hispanic people.

In other words, to argue against this, you must also make the case that the
"pipeline" feeding a particular company is a matter of that company's choices
and that the company can be held responsible for the demographics coming out
of that "pipeline". Which, if you really want to make that argument, go for
it. But I think the average person who is upset by the idea of places like
Outreachy or Code2040 will not want to follow all the way to that logical
conclusion.

------
horseLOGIC
I'm disappointed with their race-based criteria, in my perception
Arabs/Middle-Easterners ("looks like a Muslim") rank far higher on the
oppression scale than Hispanics.

------
poster123
The author rightly objects to hiring interns based on their race or professed
sexual orientation:

"This time around, however, the LLVM foundation decided to pay for an
internship themselves, and agreed a partnership with an organization called
Outreachy. This collaboration saw LLVM adopt interesting new eligibility
criteria. Outreachy’s rules state that an applicant must “meet one of the
following criteria”:

You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis or trans),
trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid or genderfree). You
live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or permanent resident
living aboard, AND you are a person of any gender who is Black/African
American, Hispanic/Latin@ [sic], Native American/American Indian, Alaska
Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander"

~~~
titanix2
How the hell are you supposed to prove that you "identify as woman" if asked?
If they follow the ideology at work here, everyone can identify as any gender,
so basically everyone can apply by pretending to be a woman. Then they can
make a fuss about being discriminated if Outreachy doesn’t acknowledge they
are indeed indentifying as a woman. This whole minory/discrimination is a
double edged sword.

~~~
nooron
But how common is it actually to pretend to be a gender you are not for
something like this? Displaying yourself as trans brings huge social
opprobrium in most places. I can’t imagine anyone I know pretending to be a
trans woman to get a job. Do you have any evidence this is a common problem?

~~~
rainbowmverse
Someone willing to take on the stigma and dangers for an opportunity instead
of go for one of the already abundant opportunities available for them may not
be entirely cis anyway.

~~~
horseLOGIC
There's actually not that many opportunities for internships on C/C++
compilers.

I mean, maybe the GCC people will take you, but... yeah.

~~~
jonhendry18
"There's actually not that many opportunities for internships on C/C++
compilers."

It seems like there are a lot of llvm-related projects outside of llvm itself,
which might mean there are C/C++ compiler-adjacent internships out there.

------
cup-of-tea
Has this been silently hidden from the front page? I saw it on the front page,
switched computers and now can't find it listed anywhere.

~~~
stillkicking
This happens every time when a post or thread exposes the social justice
orthodoxy for the pernicious and self-centered bullies that they are.

The original announcement about Rafael leaving LLVM was flagged off the front
page too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982837)

Remember LambdaConf? Those posts also ended up several hundred items off the
front-page, without being visibly flagged.
[https://archive.is/iI5NA](https://archive.is/iI5NA)

HN maintains plausible deniability and claims that it wants to keep
ideological warfare and flamewars out, but the pattern is too obvious for that
to be believable, because only one side of the argument consistently gets
flagged away.

~~~
sctb
This story was flagged by users and received a mild penalty for being a
follow-up post (to the original announcement to which you've linked) without
significant new information.

Everyone sees the pattern that represents the “other side” as having an unfair
and total advantage. From where we sit, it's an obvious bias that perpetuates
this kind of indignant sense of persecution which leaks meta all over the
discussions—except it's even-steven. How can a site be both a Church of SJWs
and an alt-right shithole?

Your lead moderator on the subject recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053)

~~~
belorn
I see this claim from HN moderators from time to time that "both sides" get
same treatment, but I can't recall a single time where this kind of article
stayed in the front page, or forbid, had flagging turned off. Anecdotal, but
it is the observed pattern that I have seen.

It would be lovely if someday you all made a statistic summery of how often
moderation action is made on gender equality articles, "which side" the
article is on, and what the moderation action was. A nice intern project that
would at minimum give some data on the subject.

I suspect that it is partial possible to do from the outside using the API,
and I have been tempted to do a bit of casual dig into how often dang comments
his moderation with "I understand" or "I get what you ..." vs a more
aggressive "do not do this again" or "you will get banned". It would naturally
just measure the tone, but would again give some insight in how the moderation
is spread on both sides.

~~~
dang
The problem with publishing data on all that is that it wouldn't convince any
of the people who care strongly about this either way. All it would do is pour
fuel on the flamewars. I say this with high confidence based on past
experiences.

~~~
belorn
I would say in other flamewar topics, publishing data has had a net positive
effect. For example, having some data on GPL vs BSD license usage has not
killed the flame war but it has elevated some of the discussion. Similar for
comparing install/download numbers of Vi vs Emacs. It is unlikely to cause
anyone to "switch side" but it reduces the anecdotal noise and focus the
discussion to either be about the strength and weaknesses of each side or to
be about the data collection method.

I personally can't think of a single flamewar topic where data has poured fuel
on the flame and made the discussion worse. Could be a failure of imagination
of course but past experience has been clearly on the positive. I see however
that the work is unlikely to be done by you all if you collectively don't
think it is a good idea.

~~~
dang
Those are good points! But I still don't see the upside. I think it would
likely force us into spending even more attention on ideological matters,
which already take up far more of our time and energy than they should. Just
attempting (and repeatedly failing) to keep the peace here is at the limit of
our resources and abilities. It takes time and energy away from other things
we could be doing to improve HN. People don't often consider this opportunity
cost, but it's on my mind a lot.

------
rainbowmverse
Summary: "I can't tell the difference between discriminatory hiring [rejecting
based on identity] and targeted hiring [seeking people out based on
identity]."

Author even acknowledges the previous policy (which does sound discriminatory
based on their framing) is no longer in place at LLVM, which is the focus of
the article.

This is not really about "open source." It's about LLVM, and springs off
randomly at "open source" using poor-quality non-citations, weasel words (of
the species "some people say"), and other hallmarks of bad, ideologically-
tilted writing.

~~~
sydd
... please read the article, its not about hiring. Its about internships.

~~~
jonhendry18
That's arguably a kind of hiring.

