
Diversity in Technology and Open Source - Spiritus
http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2017/6/5/diversity-in-technology/
======
jasode
_> we need more [...] people that are good in de-escalating arguments in bug
trackers and mailing lists, people that take care of documentations, people
that make software work in new cultural contexts (localization, globalization,
internationalization, etc.), people that care about user experience etc_

If you're a male, you have to be careful writing out suggestions like that
because to females such as my mother with a career in electronics, _it is
patronizing_. Women can also be a "strong engineers" and they shouldn't be
relegated to _" open source housekeeping duties"_ as a dangling carrot to
attract them.

Yes, Armin Ronacher means no harm but I think men often fall into the trap of
thinking they are championing women's causes when they are actually insulting
their intelligence.

~~~
tptacek
I agree. We ran into something similar when we were working on Starfighter,
where Erin and I were repeatedly told that CTFs were intrinsically male-
oriented because women disfavored zero-sum competition (which was surprising
for Erin, a roller derby skater, to hear).

It also doesn't (at least in my opinion) help the cause of balancing the
industry to be telling engineers that the only way to do so is to emphasize
soft skills and deemphasize competition (and subtextually with it technical
excellence).

~~~
belorn
I have seen very small variation on how people emphasis things to have extreme
effect on the demographic of participants. To take a different topic than IT,
a public bath house in the city have a goal that visitors should be 50% women
and 50% men. When they first had special a sauna evening called "Relax" with a
emphasis on adventure (ie, a few events had names like Everest), they had full
booked for men but only about 1/3 ticked sold for the remaining 50% that was
dedicated for women. A month later they held a second evening, this time
called "Wellness", they also renamed the events. Everest was now called ice
sauna, salt sauna was renamed to scrubbing, but other than the name they the
exact same events. This time all the tickets for women was sold after just a
day but only 2 tickets for men sold in total. A complete reverse. Later events
has shown similar pattern where more "adventure"-styled marketing leads to
more men and less women, and self-improvement styled marketing leads to more
women and less men.

A small leap I will make is that people of both genders look towards gendered
emphasis to validate their choice. If its for their gender then it is a safe
choice, and if its not then doubt arise. The effect being a small bias that
depending on what one is doing can have a rather extreme results.

~~~
wolf550e
Yeah, that happens with TV shows. I (male) can enjoy women-oriented TV shows
if I happen to watch them, but I often choose to not watch a TV show because I
guess it's aimed at women.

------
alexfi
I think IT and especially open source is one area, where your gender,
background, sexual orientation doesn't matter. The most open source projects
I'm using or working on, are made by people I don't know how they look. The
only thing that matters is the ability of writing good code.

The author is in that point right, that there are more male programmers than
female. But to solve this problem you have to start way earlier, with getting
the interest to tech things of a child (regardless of gender) in school or
even earlier.

~~~
tptacek
Major open source projects are disproportionately managed and staffed by
people with full-time jobs at major software companies, and the process of
obtaining and thriving in one of those jobs is not intrinsically color and
gender blind, so this argument isn't persuasive.

~~~
justicezyx
> process of obtaining and thriving in one of those jobs is not intrinsically
> color and gender blind

So it's ok now to post a comment with a strong statement without any data?

------
brighteyes
To really understand the issue, you need to look at all the facts. And yes,
while women are underrepresented in open source, LGBT people are
overrepresented - almost double their percentage in the general population in
fact (7% vs 4%).

So any theory of "open source drives away women" has to explain why it has the
opposite effect on LGBT people. There isn't going to be a simple answer there
and maybe we aren't even asking the right questions yet.

~~~
HelloNurse
There's no conflict, it depends on whether these LGBT people are women. I
suspect that few lesbian, bisexual, transgender women follow the typical
social patterns that keep women away from open source software: few uneducated
housewives, few early marriages and unplanned pregnancies interfering with
education and work, little inclination in general for taking care of household
chores sacrificing themselves so that their S.O. has some free time for open
source work, few and/or late children, etc.

------
a_imho
I don't agree with the implied correlation of user friendliness and diversity,
let alone the supposed causation. The Gimp example seems a forced attempt to
support Armin's agenda.

Disclaimer: I don't know how diverse the Gimp developer base is as opposed to
a user friendly competing product.

~~~
HelloNurse
Let's focus on GIMP, it's a good example. We know that none, or not enough, of
the important GIMP developers who made the important UI decisions had
particularly good taste for UI, resulting in mediocre choices. But how can we
distinguish lack of diversity due to social and economical factors filtering
the pool of potential contributors, perfectly fair self-selection of a project
committee of people who simply think alike, and random unintentional lack of
skill? Would investigating the issue accomplish anything besides aggravating
GIMP contributors? Moreover, useful plans should be about concrete attempts to
improve GIMP by contributing patches and convincing the maintainers to make
changes; attempting to make the GIMP team more diverse in the hope that it
performs better is pure wishful thinking.

------
zmoreira
If “Diversity in Open Source Is Even Worse Than in Tech Overall” and there are
less barriers to participation in Open Source it could be that this "lack of
diversity" accurately reflects the interests and capabilities of the different
groups?

It could be that the different kinds of humans are not identical and given an
even playing field different outcomes will result.

It could also be that the lack of diversity in tech is the mirror image of the
lack of diversity in other fields such as healthcare and education.

If that is so it could be that the "lack of diversity" is the result of
diversity in human inclinations and it would only be stamped out through
increasingly authoritarian measures.

~~~
HelloNurse
One has to be even more privileged to spend time on open source work than to
hold a well-paid IT job; there are additional barriers.

For instance, open source contributors need free time, which is usually a
consequence of relatively short working hours (i.e. being highly competent and
educated) and short commutes (i.e. an expensive house in a convenient
location), and not having to spend a lot of time, when at home, on
housekeeping, children, old and ill family members, hostile environment,
distractions, etc.

------
metaphorm
There's a bit of an elephant-in-the-room here which I wish Armin had discussed
more.

I agree with Armin on what he did mention, which is that there is great need
in OSS projects for people with greater focus on skills besides just hard
boiled coding.

I wish he had discussed the issue that seems to be creeping up in many places
now (recent example: cancellation of Electron Conference) which is that there
are many activist groups who are seeking to implement diversity quotas. That
is a really scary idea and a step in the wrong direction.

------
microcolonel
You know, I never stopped to figure out the ethnicities and genders of co-
contributors on a project, it truly is an unnatural thought. I'm concerned
that the people who are most concerned about diversity in "open source", do so
because they consider themselves a threat to it.

Maybe white people like diving computers or lake sonar, maybe women care more
about topography or teledildonics; but if nobody cares to even know the
accidental characteristics of the people who send the patches, then is it an
issue when the numbers bear that out?

------
b6
Nobody opposes diversity of experience, perspective, skill, etc. It really is
helpful to have people with different use cases testing and developing the
software.

But "diversity" is being used to mean diversity of gender, ethnicity, etc., as
if it matters, as if it is a reliable proxy for those other things like
experience and perspective and skill, when it's not.

When I was starting to program and talk to people on the net, nobody cared
about my age or ethnicity or gender. I was just a name and an area code and
some skills. The compiler certainly did not care about my ethnicity or gender.
It was perfectly fair to me.

I will not go out of my way to try to rope people into my projects because
they have different color skin. If people show up to help, I welcome them. I
don't particularly care about their genetic code. I don't have any
preconception about what the graphs of the ethnicities and genders of
contributors would look like. Who cares? We are not our bodies and I won't
help build a future where body attributes are considered an important part of
identity.

~~~
KirinDave
> But "diversity" is being used to mean diversity of gender, ethnicity, etc.,
> as if it matters, as if it is a reliable proxy for those other things like
> experience and perspective and skill, when it's not.

Yes, b6. It is. Your personal experience is of course unique. While your
experience may have familiar notes with many people, it's fundamentally
different from someone who grew up as a young girl. Your fears and the options
presented to you are going to be different.

Identical people come to similar conclusions. Folks who have raised this idea
of "diversity of thought" think that it adequately addresses this idea that
diversity is a value add for software by saying, "Well it's all about
thought." But those initial conditions our minds are so sensitive to are not
easily ignored.

You cannot have it both ways in this. Either you simply don't care about
diversity (which is a value decision I am not denying your ability to make),
or you do and physical indicators that shape how society treats people are a
high quality signal of diversity. You cannot rationally suggest both that
diversity is important but that people's traits and backgrounds aren't.

People try to turn this into a value proposition here (as it seems like you
may be doing) are taking half the situation into account. For a value
proposition, you're looking at your project's upside. For example, a product
primarily aimed uniquely at women would probably be best served by a qualified
woman. But even in this, bias creeps in (the famous study results suggesting
men are so acclimated to dominating the conversation that when women talk for
half the time, men perceive it as oppressive). In this specific scenario,
women have reported being hired and then simply not given the power to do
their jobs, or not being present in larger orgs with sufficient numbers to
create the impact they were hired to create.

But the diversity movement is also trying to reduce the downside for
individuals who often find themselves on the brunt end of unfair standards,
inappropriate behavior and discriminatory teammates. You may talk all day
about how "my compiler doesn't care" but this is you looking down at your desk
quietly as folks all over the industry go through terrible and unfair
treatment. Your compiler doesn't care about that, but you should.

You suggest that changing this status quo would actually be a more subtle form
of racism or sexism. This is true, insofar as the top article accidentally
falls into a paternalistic role and offers open source housekeeping roles to
women as a token offering, thinking this is an incentive. In terms of damaging
the fortunes of white men at the expense of offering other people, the truth
is that correcting for gender and racial bias in our industry will bring us
closer to a meritocracy and offer more potential for talent to emerge than the
current state of affairs.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> You cannot have it both ways in this. Either you simply don't care about
> diversity (which is a value decision I am not denying your ability to make),
> or you do and physical indicators that shape how society treats people are a
> high quality signal of diversity. You cannot rationally suggest both that
> diversity is important but that people's traits and backgrounds aren't.

But that's the whole issue. It's about backgrounds, not traits. You can't tell
someone's background from their skin color, it's just a proxy. And if you
optimize for the proxy instead of the thing itself you end up selecting black
men from affluent families in the suburbs, which minimizes the difference in
perspective they have compared to white men from affluent families in the
suburbs.

You would end up with more actual diversity if you had chosen someone from
Russia or Japan or Germany (or even a different part of the US) who has an
even more different perspective. Even if that person is also a white or Asian
male. Instead of selecting for the people who add the least _actual_ diversity
to your organization but allow you to check a box.

~~~
KirinDave
> But that's the whole issue. It's about backgrounds, not traits. You can't
> tell someone's background from their skin color, it's just a proxy.

I think this isn't strictly true, but I want to be clear that taken as you
meant this (charitably) then it's true! However, a negative version of this
bias provably and observably exists in our industry.

So long as that exist, we must remember that this is the case and apply a
counterbalancing principle. As it stands right now, people are unfairly denied
opportunity by bad actors and then potentially good actors (let's charitably
say you are one) often find themselves saying, "Well isn't this unfair?"

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> So long as that exist, we must remember that this is the case and apply a
> counterbalancing principle.

You're still balancing the wrong thing. The people underrepresented in this
industry are from particular socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. The
people with those backgrounds are not racially balanced, but that does not
make balancing on race a solution.

It's not necessarily the case that that there even _is_ a solution. If a
particular culture discourages its members from becoming computer scientists
then the members of that culture will be underrepresented in computer science.
You could make efforts to change their culture, but wasn't the different
perspective supposed to be the original point?

~~~
KirinDave
> You're still balancing the wrong thing. The people underrepresented in this
> industry are from particular socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. The
> people with those backgrounds are not racially balanced, but that does not
> make balancing on race a solution.

If you actually balance on socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, you will
tend to regress towards the base population distribution of your hiring
locality. But that's not what we see. Indeed, by selecting for white men in
America you actually will amplify classist effects in America, as wealth is
disproportionately distributed to white men.

Ultimately this is the observation it feels to me like you're hoping to avoid.
If we're genuinely seeking a diversity of perspective we'd expect to see
ethinic, class and religious diversity as a natural outcome of this desire.
That we don't suggests that in fact people are interested in the OPPOSITE a
diversity of opinion.

This particular bellwether is important because it signals a concrete group of
people who are excluded just because of how they look and the preconceptions
that surround that. This is exactly what you say you don't want anyone to do,
but exactly what you refuse to concede might be happening given the stats.

> If a particular culture discourages its members from becoming computer
> scientists then the members of that culture will be underrepresented in
> computer science.

What even is this trying to say? What specific group is both discouraging its
members to be computer scientists and also publicly demanding more
opportunities in computer science?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> If you actually balance on socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, you will
> tend to regress towards the base population distribution of your hiring
> locality.

If you actually balance on socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, you will
tend to regress toward the base population distribution of _the qualified
applicants_ in your hiring locality.

Which is basically what we see. It's not as if there are a slew of black
programmers that no one will hire because of racism. The outcome is primarily
a result of the lack of qualified minority applicants.

> Indeed, by selecting for white men in America you actually will amplify
> classist effects in America, as wealth is disproportionately distributed to
> white men.

The causation goes the other way. In order to get into this field you have to
come from a culture that encourages young people to learn math and computers,
and a family that can afford to send their children to college. Those
conditions create much of the racial disparity in qualified applicants.

The economic problem has a plausible solution, you can subsidize higher
education, the main impediment being how to finance it. But what do you
propose to do about the cultural differences? If children in one culture
aspire to be tech entrepreneurs and children in another culture aspire to be
professional athletes, you're going to see different outcomes.

> What specific group is both discouraging its members to be computer
> scientists and also publicly demanding more opportunities in computer
> science?

Groups like "women" or "African Americans" are broad and internally diverse.
You can trivially find contradictory opinions. One black man laments the small
number of black men in computer science while another black man encourages his
children to join the basketball team instead of the computer club.

~~~
KirinDave
> If you actually balance on socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, you will
> tend to regress toward the base population distribution of the qualified
> applicants in your hiring alocality.

There is no way to deny that some specialist disciplines have a paucity of
non-white-male populations. But this too is a manufactured situation in many
fields. Since schools don't directly train computer science skills, they're
acquired in the workplace. Workplaces have a higher pass rate on non-white men
than white men.

We've not no problem investing in young white men. Women of all colors? Not so
much.

> It's not as if there are a slew of black programmers that no one will hire
> because of racism.

Actually there are a lot of black programmers who have a hard time finding
work (or keeping it) because of workplace discrimination. It's not difficult
to go to google and find a non-trivial number of cases. I encourage you do so,
since I doubt you'd trust any selection I offer.

You cannot appeal to the pipeline problem to evade the problem of workplace
harassment and discrimination. Even if we normalize for the skewed workplace
demographics, white men make more.

> The causation goes the other way. In order to get into this field you have
> to come from a culture that encourages young people to learn math and
> computers,

It didn't take terribly long for you to start insinuating in a post that
african american culture hates scholarship, did it?

> and a family that can afford to send their children to college. Those
> conditions create much of the racial disparity in qualified applicants.

I'm not sure where college enters into it, but yes, education is dependent on
a stable home life.

> Groups like "women" or "African Americans" are broad and internally diverse.
> You can trivially find contradictory opinions.

I went and looked around. I found a few specific cases where religious
objections were raised but they generally don't then demand more access to the
field. Seems contradictory and non-trivial.

------
sparkling
> I wont accept your pull request because you are
> [black/female/gay/asian/latino/transgender/whatever minority of the week]

Said no one ever

~~~
KirinDave
> I will accept your pull request, but be aware on my twitter I was just
> talking about how much I despise you and every liar like you. Thank you for
> the free work, you disgusting child-corrupting liar.

Said lots of people just last week.

~~~
jp_sc
Really? Show me five Github projects where the main developer has said
something like that at some point this year.

~~~
KirinDave
Drupal?

Dude got kicked out for giving talks on how women have biological
predispositions against rational thought. He was a prominent developer that
had a profound influence on the community.

------
Klockan
Isn't it strange that diversity gets worse when you add anonymity?

------
jankotek
There is a old saying: _" On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."_

It can not get more diverse and inclusive than that.

------
aeorgnoieang
All of the members of the [Pocoo Team][1] seem to be white men.

[1]: [http://www.pocoo.org/team/#team](http://www.pocoo.org/team/#team)

Is that a reflection of your hypocrisy? Or the difficulty of recruiting people
that are not white men? I'm guessing it's mostly the latter.

You wrote:

> When you start an Open Source project today, in particular one which is
> further disconnected from frontend technologies there is a very high chance
> the organic community development will be everything but diverse.

and given the following, from [this comment][2] in this thread, which seems
probably true:

> Major open source projects are disproportionately managed and staffed by
> people with full-time jobs at major software companies, and the process of
> obtaining and thriving in one of those jobs is not intrinsically color and
> gender blind, so this argument isn't persuasive.

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14488000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14488000)

we should be tempering our judgements of open source projects, e.g. that
they're not welcoming to people that are not white men.

I'm confused as to what principle or principles you think should actually be
adopted. Should all open source projects reflect the 'diversity' of the entire
world?

Consider the following, from [this comment][3] also from this thread:

> LGBT people are overrepresented - almost double their percentage in the
> general population in fact (7% vs 4%).

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14488689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14488689)

 _Assuming_ that the above is true, is this a cause for concern? Would you
similarly be concerned if it were true that, say, Asian people, or even just
Asian men, were over-represented in technology or open source software
projects? Is that not a cause for concern for you too?

It sure seems like the only cause for concern is that there are too many white
men. Would anyone ever criticize an open source project for not having 'enough
white people' or 'enough men', let alone 'enough white men'?

More from your post:

> What's worse is the longer you wait to try to get people involved in the
> project that would naturally not try to join the harder it will be. When
> your team is 4 men, the first woman which joins will make a significant
> impact. When your team is already 20 men you need to get a lot more women on
> board to have the same impact.

My problem with this is that you're pretty clearly, tho implicitly, devaluing
contributors that don't help your project meet your diversity quotas. Your
team is six white men. Have you considered replacing your existing members
with women or people of color? When someone contacts you, your team members,
or other contributors to your projects, do you ask them to identify their
race, ethnicity, sex, or gender so you can discourage white men from
contributing? If not, don't you realize that every white man that joins your
team or contributes to your projects is making your diversity problem worse?
You're also implicitly bashing your team members and contributors for being
the wrong kind of people because you're telling them that their homogeneity
is:

1\. "not healthy for a project or a community to lack diversity" 2\.
Contributing to an "echo chamber" 3\. Increasing the difficulty of future
diversity 4\. Hurting the project because they are relatively bad at "de-
escalating arguments in bug trackers and mailing lists" 5\. Hurting the
project because they are relatively bad at "[taking] care of documentation"
6\. They are not "people that make software work in new cultural contexts
(localization, globalization, internationalization, etc.)", i.e. they are
unable to understand or work with other "cultural contexts". 7\. They are not
"people that care about user experience"

\---

I'm sure you agree with me in thinking that everyone that wants to
'participate in technology' or contribute to an open source project should be
able to do so. And moreover, people that _don 't even realize that they would
enjoy contributing to an open source project_ should be given that knowledge –
all else being equal of course.

But that's the key _constraint_ on how much marginal effort should be expended
to recruit people that aren't already participating and contributing – all
else is _not_ equal. Everything is costly to some degree.

De-escalating arguments in bug-trackers or mailing lists – let alone even
_participating_ in arguments – requires time and energy! And there's only a
finite supply of either! And opportunity costs are real and pervasive –
arguing with people _can_ be satisfying, but it can also be incredibly
aggravating!

Writing documentation – and editing it, or maintaining it, or re-organizing
it, etc. – requires time and energy! Someone has to do it and for most open
source projects that means someone has to _voluntarily_ do it. And this
neglects the fact that 'localizing' or 'globalizing' that same documentation
isn't even possible unless one knows at least two languages pretty well!

If you're going to "artificially bring balance" to your open source team, your
open source project's contributors, or your conference, you're _restricting_
the supply of possible people and thus _raising_ the relative cost of whatever
it is that you want done, whether it be writing documentation or providing
user support in your issue tracker or mailing list.

I haven't personally observed any significant _and unfair_ obstacles
preventing people that are not white men from participating in open source
projects, or 'technology' generally. But I'm _sure_ they exist. Let's get rid
of them. But first, let's actually identify them, and let's be careful with
implying that every group of people that doesn't near-perfectly reflect the
demographics of its wider community or country or whatever is guilty of overt
racism, sexism, or other discrimination.

------
mafribe

        everyone agrees that such overt 
        exclusion, if it exists, is racist 
        or sexist.
    

I certainly do not agree with this. Your opponents simply deny that the
compiler has the ability to exclude or be sexist or racist. The argument that
the compiler or test suite discriminates on anything but merit is for you to
make. Good luck.

    
    
       you can't shut down the argument 
       by claiming that it's somehow racist/
       sexist against white men.
    

On the contrary, this is an extremely good counterargument, and the reason you
try to re-frame it away is precisely because you know it is a good
counterargument. Dare we speak of "ptacekian fragility"? There is another re-
frame that you maliciously use: you talk about white men, when you should
really be talking about white and asian men. The spectacular success of asian
men (and -- to a lesser degree -- asian women) in SV (and any profession that
needs high degrees of education) absolutely, brutally burns to the crips any
claim that there is racism/sexism at play. And you know it -- hence the
ongoing reframes.

~~~
tptacek
No, it absolutely does not. The definition of "whiteness" has changed
dramatically over the 20th century to accommodate and include the successes of
formerly disfavored minorities while maintaining the lower status of latinos
and, most especially, African Americans. Italians, Greeks, and the Irish also
used not to be "white".

It is, if you stop to think about it, a little silly to argue that the success
of Asians means there's no meaningful disadvantages to being African American.

~~~
err4nt
> Italians, Greeks, and the Irish also used not to be "white".

Are you thinking of the term "WASP" in place of "white"? Italians and Greeks
are 'W' but not 'ASP', and Irish are 'WAS' but not 'P' — but I think all three
would be considered 'white' by people all around the world and I don't think
that has changed.

Perhaps where you live where's a different capital 'W' version of 'White'
(contrasted to 'white'), but that's not how most of the world looks at these
groups. Do you think the people living Italy, Greece, and Ireland believe they
are excluded from being 'white'?

~~~
temac
> Do you think the people living Italy, Greece, and Ireland believe they are
> excluded from being 'white'?

For sure some of them are not white. Not that we should care much, unless we
are dermatologists or something like that I guess.

