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metaphors and feminism

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  metaphors and feminism Stacey Lee <staceylee@mailbox.org> - 2019-03-29 08:50 +0100
    Re: metaphors and feminism Laura Arjona Reina <larjona@debian.org> - 2019-03-29 11:20 +0100
      Re: metaphors and feminism Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2019-03-30 04:00 +0100
        Re: metaphors and feminism Zlatan Todorić <zlatan@riseup.net> - 2019-03-30 06:50 +0100
        Re: metaphors and feminism Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2019-03-30 19:50 +0100
          Re: metaphors and feminism Judit Foglszinger <fgrfgr@freenet.de> - 2019-03-30 20:50 +0100
          Re: metaphors and feminism Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2019-03-30 21:30 +0100
            Re: metaphors and feminism Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> - 2019-03-30 23:30 +0100
              Re: metaphors and feminism Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2019-03-31 01:00 +0100
                Re: metaphors and feminism Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> - 2019-03-31 05:00 +0200
                  Re: metaphors and feminism Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> - 2019-03-31 11:30 +0200
                    Re: metaphors and feminism Michael Neuffer <neuffer@neuffer.com> - 2019-03-31 12:50 +0200
          Re: metaphors and feminism Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2019-03-31 01:40 +0100
            Re: metaphors and feminism Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> - 2019-03-31 09:50 +0200
            Re: metaphors and feminism Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2019-03-31 17:30 +0200
        Re: metaphors and feminism Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2019-03-31 08:50 +0200
    Re: metaphors and feminism Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2019-03-29 13:10 +0100
    Re: metaphors and feminism Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2019-04-01 00:20 +0200

#10410 — metaphors and feminism

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Hello everybody
I'm an outsider here but I couldn't ignore what is going
on.
People are making a huge fuss about the choice of political metaphors
and some people seem to be against them and other people said they
are only metaphors.
I found them really helpful for understanding how some people feel
betrayed by this community. You are all men and maybe you don't
understand empathy so this doesn't make sense to you.
Some of you are having a hissy fit when somebody uses a metaphor.
It is really unbecoming. You seem really upset about people
comparing members who feel betrayed to political prisoners, you said
that is insulting to victims of physical prisons.
When most women in tech quietly work so hard to get respect for our coding,
with all the obstacles we face, why do you insult all of us by letting
Molly de Blanc jump the queue and call herself a developer, but you
squeal like a stuck pig when somebody dares to use the word gulag,
but only as a metaphor?
If you want to be so picky, there is no way Molly can call herself
a developer. Where is her code? Interns are even complaining about
her, I found this on a blog:
"The main thing I want to note is that
you do your work not so good. You haven't responded to me and also
during the last round of Outreachy you have provide almost to no
response to applicants of Outreachy FSF project. I asked some of them
and they said that you haven't helped them:
https://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/esd-translators/2018-03/index.html
. Though, you were a mentor of this project. At the same time, I can't
see where you were useful for me. You haven't answered to me, you
haven't answered to applicants. So, it would be great if you can improve
your usefulness."
When you call her a developer, it smells like patronism. Every time
this happens it makes it so much harder for every other woman to be
taken seriously.
Do the rest of us women have to give up coding and run around putting
labels on men to become developers in this community? For me, being
a feminist and being a developer don't mean the same things that they mean
for Molly. Please don't let these women with their yellow vests,
lanyards and whistles take that away from me.
Greetings,
Stacey

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#10411

Hello Stacey and debian-project

El 29/3/19 a las 8:42, Stacey Lee escribió:
> Hello everybody
[...]

  You are all men

mmmm no.

and maybe you don't
> understand empathy so this doesn't make sense to you.
[...]
> When most women in tech quietly work so hard to get respect for our coding,
> with all the obstacles we face, why do you insult all of us by letting
> Molly de Blanc jump the queue and call herself a developer,

We call Debian Developer to the Debian contributors who have Debian finished the 
New Member process: the process of becoming an official Debian Developer (DD) [1].

[1] https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint

This process allows people contributing code to Debian to become Debian 
Developer, and allows people making other valuable contributions to become 
Debian Developer as well.

For example, I don't maintain any Debian package but I participate in the 
publicity team, the website team and the Spanish translation team, so I decided 
at some time to go through the New Member process and became a Debian Developer.

Other people regardless of gender have done the same and contribute to develop 
Debian (the operating system, and/or the community) in other areas (outreach 
efforts, event organisation, accounting, legal advice, artwork, etc).

[...]

> a developer. Where is her code? Interns are even complaining about
> her, I found this on a blog:

Debian (the operating system, and the community) is developed by volunteers in 
their free time. Sometimes our responsiveness in specific tasks or issues is 
poorer than what is expected and what we ourselves would like to be. But we're 
human and life happens, we try to improve and usually welcome help in most of 
the teams. Other times, the work is done behind the scenes so the public info is 
only part of what is happening.

In any case, AFAIU the lack of responsiveness that you point out is not related 
to Debian, so that's an issue that maybe it's better to be clarified with the 
persons or organisations involved.

[...]

> Do the rest of us women have to give up coding and run around putting
> labels on men to become developers in this community? 

Definitely not. All the contributions are welcome, we try to offer a place in 
Debian for every different skill set.

Usually a mix of skills is needed: even if you contribute mostly code, some 
communication skills are needed, sometimes you will need to take decisions about 
choosing artwork, deal with paperwork, write a blog article, or vote about 
non-technical proposals. The opposite works as well: even when contributing in 
non-coding areas, you'll probably have to deal with encryption and sometimes 
complex  interfaces, use the Debian BTS, use git repositories, look at source 
code or write some piece of software to solve some automation issue that affects 
your team, or vote on technical proposals.

For me, being
> a feminist and being a developer don't mean the same things 

I believe that there are many kind of feminisms and developers, and all them are 
welcome as long as they interact constructively with our community [2].

[2] https://www.debian.org/intro/diversity

Kind regards,
-- 
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona

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#10413

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 6:19 PM Laura Arjona Reina wrote:

> We call Debian Developer to the Debian contributors who have Debian finished the
> New Member process: the process of becoming an official Debian Developer (DD) [1].

Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
Debian contributors were more technical and less varied. I try to use
"Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that means to a
larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture (and perhaps
the official documents) move towards that too.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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#10414

On March 30, 2019 3:58:59 AM GMT+01:00, Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> wrote:
>On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 6:19 PM Laura Arjona Reina wrote:
>
>> We call Debian Developer to the Debian contributors who have Debian
>finished the
>> New Member process: the process of becoming an official Debian
>Developer (DD) [1].
>
>Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
>DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
>Debian contributors were more technical and less varied. I try to use
>"Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that means to a
>larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture (and perhaps
>the official documents) move towards that too.

+1 to wise words of Mr.Wise. 
I really do think also that we should transfer to "Debian member" term as it better describes our project and the positive mixture it is becoming.

Z

P.S. I will not comment the bs from this other person

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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#10415

Paul Wise writes ("Re: metaphors and feminism"):
> Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
> DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
> Debian contributors were more technical and less varied.

As the person perhaps most responsible for the choice of the word
`Developer' I think your explanation is very ... charitable.  It is
certainly clear to at least me that it is the wrong word.

> I try to use "Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that
> means to a larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture
> (and perhaps the official documents) move towards that too.

I see other people doing this too.  I like it.

The problem of course is that the official term is not "member" so
this is unclear and arguably wrong in some sense.  It should be.  I
would second a GR to change it.

There is also a problem with acronyms.  Debian Member => "DM" but we
already have "Debian Maintainers".  I think it would be best to rename
Debian Maintainers too.  Particularly since you can be a maintainer of
a package in Debian without having your key in the Debian Maintainers'
keyring, so this term is very confusing.

ADM = "Authorised Debian Maintainers" or "Assistant/Associate Debian
Members" or something maybe ?

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.

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#10416

> I see other people doing this too.  I like it.
>
> The problem of course is that the official term is not "member" so
> this is unclear and arguably wrong in some sense.  It should be.  I
> would second a GR to change it.

While I would agree with the phrase "DDs are full Debian members",
I wouldn't want to see the term DD removed.

Being or becoming a DD has a strong meaning for many people.
The phrase Debian Member feels artificial, like a new role,
that is something else and possibly less than DD.

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#10417

Hi Ian

On 2019/03/30 20:46, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Paul Wise writes ("Re: metaphors and feminism"):
>> Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
>> DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
>> Debian contributors were more technical and less varied.
> 
> As the person perhaps most responsible for the choice of the word
> `Developer' I think your explanation is very ... charitable.  It is
> certainly clear to at least me that it is the wrong word.
> 
>> I try to use "Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that
>> means to a larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture
>> (and perhaps the official documents) move towards that too.
> 
> I see other people doing this too.  I like it.
> 
> The problem of course is that the official term is not "member" so
> this is unclear and arguably wrong in some sense.  It should be.  I
> would second a GR to change it.
>
> There is also a problem with acronyms.  Debian Member => "DM" but we
> already have "Debian Maintainers".  I think it would be best to rename
> Debian Maintainers too.  Particularly since you can be a maintainer of
> a package in Debian without having your key in the Debian Maintainers'
> keyring, so this term is very confusing.

+1 on renaming Debian Maintainers too in such a scenario.

> ADM = "Authorised Debian Maintainers" or "Assistant/Associate Debian
> Members" or something maybe ?

So, how about:

DM: Debian Members. Full members of the project that can represent
themselves as such, vote in elections, and have a @debian.org email
address. (Pretty much what a DD and non-uploading DD is).

So, I'm just braindumping below and not sure that this is the best, but
it might be useful to have different types of non-member roles within
Debian. I also think it's useful to have a step-up to becoming a Debian
Member rather than an all or nothing approach. The DM -> DD process
works quite well, I recommend it to a lot of people that want to become
a DD, but we don't really have something like that for non-uploading
people. Below I went with "Community" as a word to describe non-member
contribution roles:

DCU: Debian Community Uploaders. These are people that are part of the
larger Debian community, but not formally part of Debian. They have
already uploaded some packages by means of sponsor and they have
demonstrated enough skill and that they can be trusted to have
unsupervised upload rights to the Debian archives (so, what DM is now)

DCM: Debian Community Members. These are people who might typically not
be interested in uploading, or even technical matters. They actively
work in community matters like improving local teams, organising meetups
and talks, contributing to Debian, etc. Just like DCM status would allow
unsupervised uploads, DCM members can get more access to certain
administrative areas that they might be involved in.

It might even be nice to offer something like an @debian.community email
address for DC* roles, which may make it easier in terms of access
control to certain services, but now I'm putting the cart before the
horse :)

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.

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#10418

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 10:22:35PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Hi Ian
> 
> On 2019/03/30 20:46, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Paul Wise writes ("Re: metaphors and feminism"):
> >> Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
> >> DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
> >> Debian contributors were more technical and less varied.
> > 
> > As the person perhaps most responsible for the choice of the word
> > `Developer' I think your explanation is very ... charitable.  It is
> > certainly clear to at least me that it is the wrong word.
> > 
> >> I try to use "Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that
> >> means to a larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture
> >> (and perhaps the official documents) move towards that too.
> > 
> > I see other people doing this too.  I like it.
> > 
> > The problem of course is that the official term is not "member" so
> > this is unclear and arguably wrong in some sense.  It should be.  I
> > would second a GR to change it.
> >
> > There is also a problem with acronyms.  Debian Member => "DM" but we
> > already have "Debian Maintainers".  I think it would be best to rename
> > Debian Maintainers too.  Particularly since you can be a maintainer of
> > a package in Debian without having your key in the Debian Maintainers'
> > keyring, so this term is very confusing.
> 
> +1 on renaming Debian Maintainers too in such a scenario.
> 
> > ADM = "Authorised Debian Maintainers" or "Assistant/Associate Debian
> > Members" or something maybe ?
> 
> So, how about:
> 
> DM: Debian Members. Full members of the project that can represent
> themselves as such, vote in elections, and have a @debian.org email
> address. (Pretty much what a DD and non-uploading DD is).

VDM: Vetted Debian Members.

Mike

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#10419

Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
> On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 10:22:35PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:

>> So, how about:

>> DM: Debian Members. Full members of the project that can represent
>> themselves as such, vote in elections, and have a @debian.org email
>> address. (Pretty much what a DD and non-uploading DD is).

> VDM: Vetted Debian Members.

If we're going to add the V, how about voting members?  That's the primary
structural distinction, after all.

I like the "member" terminology in part because it's common terminology
for non-profits, meaning (roughly) what we mean by it:

http://www.nonprofitlawblog.com/starting-nonprofit-voting-membership-structure/

That does mean it also runs the risk of some confusion since Debian itself
is not a non-profit and does not have a legal existence, hence cannot have
members in the legal sense.  But still, the definition of "member" or
"voting member" of a non-profit is spot-on for how we currently use DD.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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#10421

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 04:54:04PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
> > On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 10:22:35PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> 
> >> So, how about:
> 
> >> DM: Debian Members. Full members of the project that can represent
> >> themselves as such, vote in elections, and have a @debian.org email
> >> address. (Pretty much what a DD and non-uploading DD is).
> 
> > VDM: Vetted Debian Members.
> 
> If we're going to add the V, how about voting members?  That's the primary
> structural distinction, after all.

That's the primary structural distinction as an effect, but OTOH, the NM
process is a rather extensive vetting process. It feels more important
than the fact that those people can vote (which is a right they may or
may not exercise, not a mandate)

Mike

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#10424

* Mike Hommey:

> That's the primary structural distinction as an effect, but OTOH, the NM
> process is a rather extensive vetting process.

Not all Debian Developers went through the NM process.  Account
creation was handled differently in the beginning.  (I wasn't around
and don't know the details.)

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#10425

On 31.03.19 11:22, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Mike Hommey:
>
>> That's the primary structural distinction as an effect, but OTOH, the NM
>> process is a rather extensive vetting process.
> Not all Debian Developers went through the NM process.  Account
> creation was handled differently in the beginning.  (I wasn't around
> and don't know the details.)

During the 1995-1997 period Debian Developers were vetted by Simon
Shapiro and me.
At that time we hosted the Debian core infrastructure at our ISP.

If people participated on the lists and seemed trustworthy, we usually
had several phone calls with the prospects
and then created the required accounts on our Debian servers.

During this period Debian grew from about 60 to 250 developers.

Later the services got de-centralized and distributed over several
locations.

Cheers
  Mike

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#10420

I always assumed debian member was a term that included developer and
maintainer.
I'm all for Debian member replacing developer, but if so, I'd like a
term that encompasses maintainer and developer.

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#10423

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On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 08:31:48PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> I always assumed debian member was a term that included developer and
> maintainer.

In the Constitution, "Debian [Project] Member" is used as a synonym of
"Debian Developer". Hence it doesn't include Debian Maintainers. We
discussed this when we generalized project membership to non-uploading
(an unfortunate name in itself). The only more generic thing that we
have historically used is "Debian Contributors", which is not formalized
anywhere AFAIK, but is used in a bunch of official services, e.g.,
https://contributors.debian.org .

Cheers
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli . zack@upsilon.cc . upsilon.cc/zack . . o . . . o . o
Computer Science Professor . CTO Software Heritage . . . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader & OSI Board Director  . . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

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#10426

Sam Hartman writes ("Re: metaphors and feminism"):
> I always assumed debian member was a term that included developer and
> maintainer.
> I'm all for Debian member replacing developer, but if so, I'd like a
> term that encompasses maintainer and developer.

There are at least the following statuses/roles:

 1. "Debian Developer" as per the constitution.
 2. "DM" aka "Debian Maintainer", ie someone in the DM keyring
 3. "Maintainer:" or "Uploader:" in some source package
 4. Other contributors

You can vote in GRs and DPL elections if you are 1.
You become 1 by going through the NM process, which is supposed to
guage your technical and nontechnical suitability.

You can upload a particular package without needing sponsorship if you
are 1; or are 2, and also 3 for the package in question.
You usually become 2 by demonstrating a track record of good
contributions in role 3.

You may make management decisions[*] with respect to a particular
package if you are 3; you are also then primarily responsible for
preparing new versions, although you need a sponsor to upload them
unless you are 1 or 2 as well.


Your comment was ambiguous as to what you meant by `maintainer': did
you mean 2 or 3 ?

I think Paul has been using `member' to mean only 1.  I think that is
appropriate: `member' is then highest status that is not membership of
some special group.

3 is usually called `maintainer'.  `Maintainer' is actually right for
this role: it refers to the responsibility and authority for package.
So we need a different term for 2.

Lots of organisations use `associate'.  And 2 are specially
authorised.  Hence my suggestions of
  Authorised/Approved Debian Maintainer
  Associate Debian Member

I think the former is better because the status 2 implies only a
technical authority, not a sociopolitical authority.


Thanks,
Ian.


[*] By `management decisions' I mean, for example: giving go-ahead for
an NMU; approving/disapproving proposed patches; deciding what VCS and
packaging workflow should be used; helping choose other members of the
package team; filing a removal request; deciding on a bug severity;
negotiating with those handling other packages.  If there are others
listed as Maintainer/Uploader then these decisions are collective.
And most are subject to possible review by eg release or ftp team,
etc.  But, this is the most usual kind of authority in Debian and it
is not gatekept by any kind of access control mechanism; rather like
any management decision, it is a kind of authority honoured by humans
rather than computers.


-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.

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#10422

On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 10:58 AM Paul Wise wrote:

> Personally I think the phrase "Debian Developer" and the abbreviation
> DD is a relic of an earlier era when the set of tasks available to
> Debian contributors were more technical and less varied. I try to use
> "Debian member" in mails since it is clearer what that means to a
> larger set of people and I'd like to see Debian culture (and perhaps
> the official documents) move towards that too.

Woops, I didn't intend to spawn more discussion on this topic. I won't
respond but I want to inject some links to past ideas about Debian's
social organisation.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/12/msg00009.html
https://contributors.debian.org/
https://wiki.debian.org/CollabDebian
http://layer-acht.org/slides/20070601-debian-community.org.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20100209012159/http://debian-community.org/

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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#10412

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 08:42:30AM +0100, Stacey Lee wrote:
[SNIP]
>    If you want to be so picky, there is no way Molly can call herself
>    a developer. Where is her code?

What is the basis for the assumption that a "developer" must show code
for his or her work?

It is interesting to me because while producing code is perhaps the most
traditional and visible way for a developer to be recognized as a
developer, during the years that I taught CS/CE at university I had many
students who considered themselves weak programmers.  I specifically
counseled every single one of them that writing code was only a small
part of being a developer.  For example, bug reports need to be written,
reviewed, triaged, reproduced, etc.  Test plans need to be written and
executed.  Team resources need to be managed, etc.  I saw how this idea
encouraged students who considered themselves weak programmers to find
that there are other aspects of being a developer that might be as
appealing to them as writing code is to others.

I do not know about Molly specifically, but to say that someone cannot
be considerd a developer without having written code demonstrates a
fundamental misunderstanding about what being a developer is in general.

[SNIP]
>    Do the rest of us women have to give up coding and run around putting
>    labels on men to become developers in this community?

Not at all.  There are many ways to contribute to Debian and writing
code is only one way.  If that is your preferred method of contribution,
then by all means jump right in.

>    For me, being
>    a feminist and being a developer don't mean the same things that they mean
>    for Molly. Please don't let these women with their yellow vests,
>    lanyards and whistles take that away from me.

The actions of another only take away what you allow them to take away.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#10427

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On Fri, 2019-03-29 at 08:42 +0100, Stacey Lee wrote:
> Hello everybody
> I'm an outsider here but I couldn't ignore what is going
> on.
[...]

Shut up Daniel.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Design a system any fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

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