Outreachy Developers Have Been Making Some Useful Contributions To The Linux Kernel

[starshipeleven]

We all agree on equal opportunity and equal treatment, right?
Although Outreachy is very ironically trying to achieve that using unequal opportunity and unequal treatment, the fact of the matter is, the demographic it targets is commonly mistreated and denied opportunities (assuming they are at least equally qualified compared to their competition). You can basically look at it like "leveling the playing field". I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I think that's what they're shooting for.
It is a hypocritical approach, but I don't see any of you coming up with a better idea. Granted, a lot of you somehow believe discrimination just doesn't exist, which is absurdly naive.

The lack of good solutions (perceived or stated) does not make band-aids or plain hypocritcal shit "solutions".

If someone is discriminated because of gender or skin color or favourite football team, doing some free internships won't really change much.

He/she/it is still a black trans woman and everyone shitting on that will keep shitthing on that, regardless of the work experience of the individual.

[ssokolow]

Similar story in the nordic countries in Europe where the more they push for equality of outcome the worse the numbers end up. Women simply have different interests (shocker!)

I've read those articles. They end with the caveat that, while that may be true and may be partly dependent on things like "women tend to have better language skills, which introduces a statistically significant skew toward writing-related jobs", the nordic countries still have not completely factored out other influcences dissuading women from STEM jobs.

Also, I don't have the URLs handy, but I remember reading that factors like "women tend to have better language skills" aren't inherent but, rather, an artifact of how boys and girls develop different skills at different rates (even if they both wind up in the same place eventually) and how modern curricula line up with those development curves. (eg. math education curricula line up better with the male neurodevelopment curve while language education curricula line up better with the female development curve, which results in boys learning bad cognitive habits surrounding language and feeling more discouraged and vice-versa with math for girls.)

[Djhg2000]

It's always fun watching SJWs trying to justify why their ideas, most of which are proven terrible by history, are actually good. How can you possibly defend things like racism and gender quotas? Why would you feel the need to belittle your fellow human beings like that?

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

[dkasak]

Ah, our weekly dose of Incels and overlooked ( though certainly as capable, if they do say so themselves ) white males getting very triggered ... <yawn>

[JAYL]

That's complete nonsense.
Outreachy allows people that have ALREADY CHOSEN their field to get some free internships. You don't volunteer to contribute to an opensource project BEFORE you learn how to fucking code.

That's the first time I've ever seen this "women never got a computer when young because they were females" thing. While I'm not disputing that the two facts are true separately (and I'm being magnanimous about the "personal computers" thing which kind of sounds like SJW bs), I'm disputing the causality link between them.

I'm pretty sure that women were most definitely NOT a thing in most engineering and computer science 40 years ago in my country, been there, done that.
Now it's better, but most women in engineer and computer (and any science-related) classes are a minority and look kind of meh or downright ugly (not that the average male engineer has amazing looks either, you get my point, nerds will be nerds).
Where there was a massive change is in other degrees, like Bology-related, Medical Doctors and Law, more than half the class is female, and you find many good-looking ones too.

it's funny you mention medical doctors because that's a recent phenomenon. The vast majority of physicians are men

My personal theory (which has the same validity of the "personal computers" one while being much less likely to be complete bs) is that engineering and computer science jobs suck balls for a woman that actually wants to have a family (because it does), while other professions either suck the same but pay more, or are more flexible or whatever.

Can your theory explain why the rate of women going into computer science dropped drastically (by over half since the 1980s)? Your model needs to explain why computer science rates were on the rise up until the 1980s and then went into a steady decline. Did all women up until the 1980s think computer science jobs were fine if they wanted a family and then all of sudden not? Why is it even worse for women of color? If you don't use any socio-economic analysis you leave these questions unanswered. You would also need to explain why in India they have much higher percentage of women in computer science despite having a culture with more emphasis on family compared to the United States.

Here is a pretty graph showing what I am talking about

I'm not saying that the introduction of the personal computer into the home of Americans is the sole reason why there are very few women in computer science. It's a very complicated sociological question and there are many factors, but when Outreachy is doing something that results in patches that wouldn't have existed otherwise, I see that as a win. My life can only be improved by what they did. I either benefit from a bug fix or feature that wouldn't have existed previously, or it doesn't affect me at all because I don't use whatever software they contributed to.

[JAYL]

This statement is false. I come from the eastern block where IT and participation of women in STEM has had a different story to it.

I've studied in a "electrotechnical" high school (senior high in your system) which is very STEM-y. By the time I was there (early 2000s) there were a total 4 girls in the whole school. That's 4 girls out of ~600 total students (5 classes ~30 each with 4 years).

I asked our teachers about this and they told me that some time ago the ratio was 50/50 even possibly more towards females. The reason for the sudden drop was the revolution in 1989 which made us "free".

You see in the old system STEM was very much a great way to get ~10-20% better wage than most (which was huge back then, most people had same wages by definition, it was all controlled and pre-scribed by the state). Most parents therefor pushed the girls to attend these schools as well.

Once the free market system came in girls simply started going where they wanted to go more, which is medicine, humanities etc. More social/humanitarian aspects of work.

Similar story in the nordic countries in Europe where the more they push for equality of outcome the worse the numbers end up. Women simply have different interests (shocker!)

You're right, my statement was wrong. I should have also specified that I was referring to the United States. Women in computer science was never comparable to men, but it was on the rise (similar to other fields in the United States due to the feminist movement IIRC), but then it fell off a cliff. There is a lot of variance in different countries, for example, in india, women make up 45% of computer science undergrads

[JAYL]

The end goal is simple, a free society where people progress based on their abilities. That is an environment free of discrimination.

Note at all. Rather it is to have people in the community that got there based on their ability.


the idea is to make the community better by having people that can make real contributions.

Please point out to me their patches which you think are illegitimate or got accepted without being a "real contribution".

[JAYL]

I don’t claim to know why woman suddenly left the field however this seems like a totally fabricated reason. The unfortunate thing here is that I never has the foresight to ask some of the woman that left the program when I was in school. I’m certain the answers will vary but it would be interesting if there was a common thread.

whatever you have to realize recruiting people based on sex is discriminatory. There is no other way to look at it.

There's plenty of research on this and people usually think it's a confluence of factors. If it's "discrimination", then I don't really care. It doesn't negatively impact me or anybody's life. It improves other's life. I can improve my life if they contribute to a project that I use. I don't see the downside. There's plenty of things that are "discriminatory" because they target groups of people. Progressive tax policies unfairly target people with more income. Many scholars and grants unfairly target people with lower income. The Voting Rights Rights Act of 1965 targeted or "discriminated" black people so states had to let them vote or Obergefell v Hodges discriminated against gay people by letting them marry in the united states.

I have no problem with discrimination or targeting of groups of people if nobody is negatively affected. Why would I be against the improvement of people's lives?

[Britoid]

I have no problem with discrimination or targeting of groups of people if nobody is negatively affected. Why would I be against the improvement of people's lives?

You don't know that. Whilst I'm sure Outreachys intentions are good, there could be a person from a disadvantaged background who may want to do open source work but needs to work a boring day job to get by, who would be excluded from Outreachy because he's a white straight male.

The open source world has now lost out because of discrimination. Discrimination of all kinds based on factors outside of someones control is wrong. It's like saying you should give a job to a woman over a man based on gender because the man has more opportunities because he was born with XY chromosones.

[tomas]

Now it's better, but most women in engineer and computer (and any science-related) classes are a minority and look kind of meh or downright ugly (not that the average male engineer has amazing looks either, you get my point, nerds will be nerds).
Where there was a massive change is in other degrees, like Bology-related, Medical Doctors and Law, more than half the class is female, and you find many good-looking ones too.

In what way is any of the above relevant to the discussion at hand?