Over the last few days I’ve been building a new system, picking and choosing what I want to keep from my old machine and installing some new software. I don’t have the disks for my old installation of Adobe CS3, so I can’t run it on the new OS. This was annoying, but from personal experience and a “writing for the web” class I attended at the University of Washington (probably the most valuable class I ever took in school), I knew there would be a way around it. I’ve made use of Photoshop, but not even close to its full potential. I’ve wanted to see what I could do with InDesign, but I’m not producing any print magazines, and it’s kind of overkill for what I have in mind. For most of my letterhead and pdf creation I’ve used LaTeX through the LyX interface. This was helpful for legal correspondence, as I could match opposing attorneys’ letterhead with my own superior creations. Petty, I know, but small triumphs help sustain us through the absurdities of the American judicial system. When I have to open Word documents, I simply use Open Office, and for writing code or text to post online I prefer a text editor such as Bare Bones’ BBEdit, which color codes tags and code and doesn’t foul up the text with some proprietary encoding.
About half of the programs I’ve been using in desktop publishing are proprietary software, but I’ve found a substitute for every single one. This is great for me, because I can’t afford to buy Creative Suite all over again, and I’d like to avoid paying for the cheaper ones as well if at all possible. For Photoshop’s replacement I installed the GIMP, which is more than adequate for my needs. I also checked out and downloaded Scribus, the open source replacement for InDesign. I’m sure that will be sufficient for me as well. And instead of BBEdit, I am now using the free Textwrangler, which is produced by the same company and has all the features I was using with the old version of BBEdit (it appears to be essentially the same thing). Of course, I installed the latest stable version of MacTeX and LyX, both of which are open source.
After finishing up, it occurred to me that all the bright guys out there who put work into these applications have done me a big favor. I really owe them one. One might ask why in the world they would bother to put this stuff together and give it away for free, but as a guy who is putting out content online for free I totally understand: men build and create things because it is in their nature. Money, although great to have (and, unfortunately, necessary), is not our primary motivation. Gearheads get a thrill out of watching that engine turn over for the first time, programmers love to see their code doing what it was designed to do, and architects are delighted by the buildings they design. Even ordinary guys often find their greatest joys involve the small projects in their garages, basements and back yards.
If you go out anywhere there’s civilization and look around, you’ll see the fruits of these labors. In fact, they are so common that we take them for granted. When you see a beautiful breed of dog such a golden retriever, you tend not to think of the years of care and work it took to develop the breed. When you drive through town you don’t usually consider that the reason hundreds of thousands of huge vehicles have not hopelessly clogged the streets is that some guys who were fascinated by maps and streets worked out a system to keep traffic flowing. One could go on with this ad infinitum, but the point is that this is simply what men do. Civilization was developed to reward them for this, and we can see the impressive results, but sadly we seem to have taken a turn in the opposite direction in recent years.
Now, this being The Spearhead, I thought it might be worthwhile to investigate what’s going on with the other gender as far as Open Source is concerned. It occurred to me, after seeing so many names, that the open source community is thoroughly dominated by men, so I did a little searching to see if this is actually the case. As one might expect, it certainly is.
According to an article in Network World, women comprise somewhere between 1.5 and 5 percent of the OS community. I’d be willing to bet the lower figure is more accurate. Writer Amy Vernon is not happy about this, but at least she isn’t whining that it’s all men’s fault:
Instead of worrying that other people aren’t going to think we can do things, we need to just do them. Show people what we can do instead of waiting for someone to ask us. That’s what the boys do; haven’t we spent the last 40+ years saying we want to be treated equally?
She’s a bit more optimistic about female involvement in cutting-edge tech than I am. In fact, as much as I admire her go-getter attitude, I’m afraid that, as usual, an entirely different approach will be implemented to “equalize” the open source community. Another article, written by a member of “PHPWomen,” opens with a far more familiar tone:
The topic of the difficulties women face in the open source community comes up often. Here at OStatic we’ve discussed everything from the gender bias and harassment some women say they face, to highlighting the projects that are helping change the way females experience the developer community.
A new project has gotten underway recently that aims to foster a healthy and respectful environment between female PHP developers and the PHP community. PHPWomen has teamed up in a partnership program with six open source projects that it feels represents the best the community has to offer in terms of an open, respectful, and friendly community.
So, if you ask the PHPWomen, the reason women are underrepresented in open source development is because of “gender bias” and “harassment” (i.e. having to endure being approached by beta males). However, gender bias as a factor excluding women from open source development is a fantasy, because so many developers are virtually anonymous, and many use pseudonyms anyway. The best OS developers, such as Don Knuth of TeX fame, produced their masterpieces largely on their own time and without a “team.” Most people have no idea who wrote the OS software they use, and don’t really care. All that matters is that it works.
I sincerely hope that efforts to equalize open source development do not destroy it, but unfortunately I can see some potential damage in the future. All it takes is one lawsuit or public allegation to tarnish the reputation of an entire project, and considering that the development is largely a product of goodwill, the disappearance of mutual respect and an atmosphere of comradery could easily sink some important efforts.
In the meanwhile, I think open source development is worth our support. First of all, men ought to use open source software when possible, and then if they have the means donate to projects. If you don’t need MS Office, download Open Office — hell, use Linux instead of Windows if you’re feeling adventurous. If you’re an audio junkie, check out Audacity. Try out the GIMP instead of Photoshop, and see if you can find any other programs to replace or avoid purchasing. Before purchasing any software, first do some research to determine whether you could do the same job with an open source program. Not only will you save money, you’ll be supporting guys who work outside of the big software and Silicon Valley companies, which are fully committed to affirmative action and propping up female entitlement.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Most people have no idea who wrote the OS software they use, and don’t really care. All that matters is that it works.
And with that one sentence you nailed why the number of women involved in Open Source is so low.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
Gearheads get a thrill out of watching that engine turn over for the first time, programmers love to see their code doing what it was designed to do, and architects are delighted by the buildings they design.
Favorite line ^. Nothing makes my programmer buddy smile like seeing his hours of coding work, or my web designer friend finally put up a great looking site. So damn true.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
{ 3 trackbacks }