GNOME Foundation Issues 2018 Annual Report - Massive Increase In Funding

[treba]

I thought there was only two groups, the "group of people contributing", and the "group of people who do not contribute" wasn't aware of other groups.



So in your opinion; can you explain in plain English what is what was preventing those ladies from becoming programmers?

Is it that they had no interest on it? lack of knowledge?

And what is that the outreach programs did exactly to get them interested?

Those are serious questions.

Hundred years ago women contributed little to daily politics, now they do a lot (at least in certain countries). I don't want to say that women and non-whites will necessary reach similar levels of contributions to foss software in the future because I can't know. Maybe they are less interested in general. But there are a lot of indicators suggesting that there are very talented people out there who would contribute if they got some extra help at the start. So I'd say lets try and see if it works. We can win a lot and lose much less (because there's more money than good programmers. Therefore too many bad programmers getting paid way too much, wasting money all over the place).

[jacob]

Where were those outreach programmes when I was eating mold off the walls because I couldn't afford food and rent because the British simply do not hire Poles for anything more ambitious than cotton picking?

Didn't you know? You are a Pole therefore you have White Privilege (tm) even if you couldn't afford food. Now if you were a Woman(tm), or LGBTQZXVJGJ, or "of color", then yes they would have been interested. They certainly wouldn't want you to get ahead in life either, mind you, because that would be treason and it would go against their narrative. Who knows, it may even give someone ideas. You still wouldn't be able to afford food, but you would be their poster child. For what it's worth.

[jacob]

So in your opinion; can you explain in plain English what is what was preventing those ladies from becoming programmers?

Nothing whatsoever I would imagine. But of course when you encourage people to devote all their energy to demented identity politics and play victimisation olympics, obviously they won't have much time left to get involved in something actually intelligent, learn, participate and contribute. But then again, it's often much easier to just sit and wait for someone else to "empower" you.

[rmoog]

As for the outreach programs, I hope they succeed in making gnome and foss in general more accessible to people who are not white/east-asian guys. We're quite a homogeneous group atm, making it harder for outsiders to join. More talent from other groups is certainly welcome.

Where were those outreach programmes when I was eating mold off the walls because I couldn't afford food and rent because the British simply do not hire Poles for anything more ambitious than cotton picking?

[Jedibeeftrix]

I thought there was only two groups, the "group of people contributing", and the "group of people who do not contribute" wasn't aware of other groups.

nor me.

[JPFSanders]

That sounds great! The gnome people do an immense job with little manpower. As for the outreach programs, I hope they succeed in making gnome and foss in general more accessible to people who are not white/east-asian guys. We're quite a homogeneous group atm, making it harder for outsiders to join. More talent from other groups is certainly welcome.

I thought there was only two groups, the "group of people contributing", and the "group of people who do not contribute" wasn't aware of other groups.

At my (small) workplace there are several women working as programmers, all of them after having participated in different outreach programs. All of them previously did other stuff and didn't really consider getting into tech before they somehow got there. So from my perspective that's a big win for everybody. Talent is rare, wasting it a serious economical/political/social/ethical mistake.

So in your opinion; can you explain in plain English what is what was preventing those ladies from becoming programmers?

Is it that they had no interest on it? lack of knowledge?

And what is that the outreach programs did exactly to get them interested?

Those are serious questions.

[treba]

That sounds great! The gnome people do an immense job with little manpower. As for the outreach programs, I hope they succeed in making gnome and foss in general more accessible to people who are not white/east-asian guys. We're quite a homogeneous group atm, making it harder for outsiders to join. More talent from other groups is certainly welcome.

At my (small) workplace there are several women working as programmers, all of them after having participated in different outreach programs. All of them previously did other stuff and didn't really consider getting into tech before they somehow got there. So from my perspective that's a big win for everybody. Talent is rare, wasting it a serious economical/political/social/ethical mistake.

[rmoog]

What a waste of money. They'll just make a GNOME 4 which will be even worse than 3, turn away more current, old and would-be Linux users, and preach about success. Yeah, maybe in increasing Windows/OSX adoption, sure.

[gabber]

Those programs are trivially sexist or discriminating (if you consider a literal meaning of those words), as they are aiming to correct a certain imbalance. Nevertheless, they are doing something good for society.

1.) Ends do not justify the means.
2.) This reasoning was used in the past to justify horrible things, "doing something good for society" is not the same for everybody!

[alex79]

It is a shame that money is used to fund Outreachy — a sexist and racist program based on the principle of discrimination. 🤢

Damn right, I didn't even know my fav distro Fedora is supporting this crap.