It was, and I still stand by my comments that you can thank Mark for starting a company to try to get Ubuntu out to people. You can thank Mark for a lot of things but showing defensiveness in the face of sexism isn’t one of them.

What he did while posting here was just post more defensiveness.

You know what would have solved all of this?

“Yes, diversity is important in anything you do. The more you include people the more people there are putting towards the project, and the more they put towards the project.”

You know what would have solved all of this?

Not being defensive and not taking the shock that comes when you say that diversity isn’t important as a “set-up.” Or that someone basically repeating what he just said as “putting words in his mouth.”

Yes, Actions are important. This is why some people make the community appealing and they are doing their best to try to be as inclusive as possible. However, words count too and when the words used by someone in a leadership role doesn’t sync up with how the community is acting then what you get is a cognitive dissonance between those actions and those words.

I too am on the outside looking in. I am not part of the Ubuntu community, I am simply a user of Ubuntu as I do not believe that access to knowledge should be limited to those who can afford licenses. I did state that I had a differing view as to the need for active feminism. We do need to call out sexism regardless of penalty. That’s a given. I know why, you know why, but does Mark Shuttleworth know why? I really don’t think he does.

For the last little while I’ve been trying to get the fan on my eeepc to work properly under Ubuntu NBR. I’m failing miserably. I’m sure many of you here, if I handed it to you and asked you to fix it, would probably have it working perfectly within 10 minutes. You most likely have developed the skills to identify and logically go about solving the problem through experience and maybe some training. I think the same holds true for identifying sexist behaviors and how to effectively go about correcting them. I don’t think I can honestly expect Mark Shuttleworth to recognize patriarchal privilege in a mainstream sitcom any more than he can expect me to know how to bash script. Both require experience to learn. The important thing is, I am trying to learn. Much in the same way I think Mark is now trying to understand why, when he obviously doesn’t see why, his previous actions are being perceived as sexist. He posted here. When the majority of online commentary on his address and irc session that I have seen has been sexist, that tells me that he at least recognizes that hurt has been done and he is attempting to correct it. I think that should be encouraged and fostered. It’s a small step, but an important step. And yes, I do think the people here and others have done an excellent job of shining a light on the fact that something is horribly amiss, I just thought that went without saying :)

As someone on the outside looking in I see a contradiction. I see someone who has said and stated that sexism is discouraged in a community, except of course when he’s the one who makes the comments. This isn’t unique, in fact it’s a disappointing standard.

What I’ve seen is that there are quite a few people interested in keeping this discussion relevant and working to actively discourage sexism in the community, by pointing it out when it happens no matter who is utters the comment. That’s what gives me hope for maybe doing something within this community in my free time. It’s those people that deserve the thanks for showing that sexism is discouraged in the community.

Thank you.

For the rest of what Shuttleworth said, and from his previous comments, it seems to me that he’s starting from the axiom that meritocracy trumps bigotry. Merit, however, is not an objective property. Most applications of the concept of “meritocracy” lean on conventional and conformist models of merit, and that tends to reinforce existing patterns of privilege.

On the other hand, in a creative endeavour, a greater diversity of insights and ideas is enormously helpful. At the height of debates on affirmative action at UC Berkeley, one of my English Lit professors said that he’d found that when the students were predominantly a homogenous group of young white men, there were only a handful of ideas that would predictably be offered, over and over, whereas with a more diverse group of students, there were much more complex and interesting discussions.

So, if developing software and designing operating system distributions is a creative endeavour, having a more diverse set of developers would, yes, make things more interesting. But that’s not orthogonal to the question of merit. From the point of view of encouraging creativity, making things more interesting is critical.

Diversity is meritorious.

You’ve not apologized for (or even acknowledged the existence of) the sexist remarks you made in this community, and have instead come out swinging at the people who’ve called you on them. (Yes, we all make mistakes and have all manner of imperfections, but ideally we learn something from these mistakes and apologize when we get it wrong).

Also, if I’m reading your response here correctly, you’re suggesting that sexism should be tolerated in some way as a pragmatic measure for the good of the community. Or how else would you define a pragmatic approach to instances of sexism, other than to identify and confront them? I’m intrigued.

If you think using baiting, and fallacy to coerce Mark into apologizing for what he said before is a good modus operandi, and are quick to disregard any opinion that is not a full match to yours, I don’t think I can agree with this specific instance of the FLOSS feminist movement.