| I disagree. If the proportion of women in FSF was the same as "tech" in general, then your interpetation would be "colorable" [1]. However, the accusation is more specifically that the proportion of women in the FSF and FOSS in general is (or at least was under Stallman) significantly lower than that of women in programming jobs in general, which suggests that there is something more going on. Following a 2009 FSF women's mini-summit in Boston, Bruce Perens acknowledged this difference, even offering an explanation: "... there are more women who hold technical jobs than there are women who so love the technology that they will work on it whether they get paid or not. That seems to be an especially male thing." However, that was very much not the conclusion of discussions among women in tech at the time, who were more likely to cite the sexist behaviour of some prominent men as reasons they kept out of parts or all of FOSS/FSF. RMS' name certainly came up a lot. Rachel Kroll also wrote a post back in 2018 with the title "Choosing to stay out of the community", talking about similar issues. [1] A legal term that means more or less "plausible so far, but we'd need a full trial to get a definite answer". [2] http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/09/moat/ |