Open Letter to Mark Shuttleworth

“I wanted to bring this up because I think what you said in that
talk was pretty dismissive of the skill and dedication that many
women have already brought to Linux, not only as designers and
documenters (which I gather you mentioned in your talk) but as
coders, release managers, sysadmins, and more — and of those
who might be interested in the future.

“2009 is shaping up to be a watershed year for women in open
source. We have seen numerous high profile incidents where men have
made remarks in conference presentations which have dismissed,
marginalised, or upset women; we’ve seen an increase in discussion
on blogs, mailing lists, and twitter/identica; many conferences
have invited speakers (including myself) to keynote on the subject
of inclusivity and diversity; and a number of efforts towards
recruiting and supporting a more diverse open source community have
been launched. In light of the attention the subject has been
getting of late, your comment at LinuxCon seems oblivious at best,
and only serves to further damage the Linux community’s
reputation.”

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