by Jan Stedehouder

The FTA was launched on January 25, 2010, with two courses: The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards and The GNU/Linux Operating System. With that, the FTA became the first international master-level program about Free Technologies. One year later seven courses had been taken 161 times by 75 students from 26 countries. Apart from tutoring by teachers from the participating universities the students got the chance to be taught by Jon “Maddog” Hall and Benjamin Mako Hill, with a guest lecture by Richard M. Stallman coming up in 2011.

“Free” doesn’t mean “gratis”. The FTA was made possible by a € 300.000 grant by the European Commission. The final report to the EC made for a perfect starting point to answer our questions.

The European building blocks of the Free Technology Academy

The FTA was created by a consortium consisting of the Free Knowledge Institute (The Netherlands), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC, Spain), the University of Agder (Norway) and the Open University of the Nederlands. Their aim was, and is, to provide high quality training to IT-professionals, educators, decision makers and IT-students. Appropriate for the core topic of the training, free technology, the online learning environment needed to be build using free technology with all learning materials being made available under free licenses.

It wasn’t necessary to build the FTA from scratch. Its online learning environment was build upon the University Campus software developed by the UOC. The FTA Virtual Campus can use either Moodle or Sakai as learning management system. The SELF Platform, developed by the Free Knowledge Institute, was used in translating and pre-publishing the learning materials for some courses. The learning materials themselves were released as Open Educational Resources under the GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Some of the materials were already available in Spanish and Catalan and were translated into English for the FTA.  And the FTA didn’t need a physical building as all course were offered via the virtual campus, using the method of distance learning.

The course programme was expanded gradually, beginning on January 25, 2010, with the courses “The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards” and “The GNU / Linux Operating System“. The second round, which began on April 26, 2010, offered the courses “Web Application Development “and” Software Development “. Round three, from September 6 onward, discussed “The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards”, “Legal aspects of the Information Society” and “Network Technologies“.  Thus, each round provided for a limited number of courses.  This changed in 2011. Students can now choose from a wider range of courses in each round. Students of the UOC, the Open University and the University of Agder can obtain credits for their regular university training by successfully completing FTA-courses.

Though all materials can be downloaded for free (as in “free beer”) from the website, following an FTA course isn’t “gratis”. Each three-month course carries a tuition fee of € 380, –.  In the third round of courses 17 scholarships were granted to students from developing countries.

Throughout its first year the FTA expanded its international appeal by developing a network of partner organisations and educational institutions. This network focuses on sharing knowledge and experience, on cooperation and on establishing the FTA as a full Masters program.

Is there really a need for free technology education?

Both in the industry as in government the use of free and open source software continues to grow, and with that the demand for skilled IT-staff. So, yeas, there is a need for more expertise on free technology is by IT-professionals, teachers and decision makers who decide on the procurement and deployment of IT.

Jon “Maddog” Hall looks at the FTA from an educational perspective: “First of all, you have to realize that FTA is oriented toward a Master’s Degree, which means that the student should have an undergraduate degree. For me the question really goes to the fundamental goal of higher education.  I have always felt that the goal of undergraduate study is how to learn from books, how to gather data and create information. The Master’s Degree is to practice finding a problem and solve it, and the PhD is the culmination of all of that. Ergo I think the most important thing about FTA is not to provide “training”, but to show people how to use free and open source software to solve problems, and (more importantly) show them how to contribute their own learnings”.

Speaking about ‚free technology’ without taking a higher, more ideological framework into account is almost impossible.  At least, it is important for Benjamin Mako Hill, a free technology activist. “An important reason, and the one that makes me most interested in the project (FTA), is that it helps increase the number of people who are empowered and able to determine how their technology works. Technology defines what I can say, how I can say it, when I can say it, and even who I can say it to”. He compares it to describing a beautiful sunset which you want to describe to a loved one on the other side of the world. “Today’s communication technology makes this possible. In the process, however, the technology in question puts constraints on message communicated. For example, if I pick up my cell phone, my description of the sunset will be limited to words and sounds that can be transmitted by phone. If I happen to have a camera phone and the ability to send a picture message, I will be able to communicate a very different type of description. If I’m limited to 150 characters in an SMS message, my message will be constrained differently again”.

Considering the possibilities and constraints of technology the question arises who controls the technology: “As information technology becomes increasingly central to our lives, the way we experience, understand, and act in the world is increasingly controlled by technology and, by extension, by those who control technology.” According to Benjamin the struggle for freedom in the 21st century boils down to obtaining the freedom to control your own technology. “Free software can be understood as an answer to this question: An answer in the form of an unambiguous statement that technology must be under the control of its users. When free software triumphs, we  will live in a world where users control their technological destiny. We simply cannot afford to fail”. Education in free technology is an important element to achieve this: “In this sense, an education in free technology means an important step toward being able to realize ones autonomy as granted by free software. By creating people who not only control technology but do it with a strong basis in free technology, they do a huge service both to themselves and to the rest of the world”.

Are people interested in following FTA courses?

This is all fine and well, but is it worth paying € 380,– per course for? Are people willing to pay to be trained in what is essentially free? The answer is yes. The report to the European Commission mentions the following numbers of students enrolled in the various courses:

Most students came from the Netherlands (33), then from Belgium (7), Germany (5), Uganda (4), Brazil (3), Rwanda (2) and Tanzania (2). The other students came from 19 different countries each.

Participation by students from the Spanish and Norwegian consortium partners was almost absent (one from Norway, none from Spain). Wouter Tebbens of the Free Knowledge Institute can explain this: “The UOC offers a full masters program in Spanish and Catalan which makes it less likely for students to participate in the courses given in English at the FTA. The University of Agder (Norway) joined the consortium later on which might explain the low participation from Norway”. The two Dutch members of the consortium were both founding members and widely published the new FTA in their respective networks.

Most students were IT-professionals with full-time jobs who wished to deepen their knowledge on free technology. A second group consisted of teachers. The professional background of the students is visible in the average age of the participants.

The FTA also wanted to attract decision makers as students. It appears this group mostly participated in the first course (The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards). The staff isn’t completely sure, as not all students provided information on their professional backgrounds.

The report to the European Commission mentions a high level of satisfaction by the students. The interviews with two students, Peter Rock (Canada) and Harry Thijssen (The Netherlands) seem to confirm this.

Peter Rock (38, IT-teacher on a secondary school) works with and teaches about free software since 2001. So, he is not a novice in this field. „I am taking the ‚Concept of Free Software and Open Standards’ at the moment. It is a general course and a good portion is review for me. But part of it is brand new and I am learning a lot from this course“.  He is going through the FTA modules one at a time: „I am a full-time teacher, I don’t have enough time to go at a faster pace“. For Peter, enrolling in the FTA is an investment (he pays the fees out of his own pocket) into one day getting his Masters’ degree. „I completed my B.Ed in 1998 and wanted to pursue my masters’ degree for some time, but I needed it to be a program that matched/meshed with something I was really interested in“. Though getting a full masters’ isn’t possible with the FTA at the moment, Peter hopes it can be achieved one day.

Harry Thijssen (54, working for the government) is an experienced IT-professional and an active supporter of the development of PSPP, an open source version of the statistical software SPSS (helps with translation and building the Windows version of PSPP). The financial support of his employer allowed him to participate in four courses. „My employer stimulates the professional development of it’s employees. The courses we want to follow need to be reasonably priced and be put to practical use immediately. The FTA courses meet those requirements and are in line with the Dutch governments’ action plan for open standards and open source software, Netherlands Open in Connection“. The virtual campus with students from various countries were one of the attractions for Harry: „Free and open source software appeals to me and in my opinion there will be an increasing demand for it in the coming years. The courses are not locked-in to vendors and not even to countries which brings the knowledge and skills to a more abstract and a more widely applicable level. And it’s just fun to realize that, in principle, a researcher in some research station in the Antarctic or a sailor on ship somewhere between Shanghai and Rotterdam can both participate in the FTA without any problems“.

Collaborative learning, distance learning

What comes to mind when you hear about a virtual campus and distance learning? The freedom to study where and when you want to. The FTA does provide distance learning and collaborative learning via the virtual campus, but its courses are offered with specific starting and ending dates. Lex Bijlsma, from the Open University and responsible for the FTA, states this was a deliberate decision. „Our traditional model of distance learning allowed students to begin a course whenever they wanted to and finish it a their own speed. However, we did notice a substantial dropout due to loss of motivation. The last couple of years we experimented with a new model of distance learning, with fixed start- and ending dates and help from professional tutors. It had a profound impact on the study results“.

For Peter, currently working at the Kaohsiung American School (Taiwan) and who taught on schools in Egypt, Canada, Lebanon and Cameroun, this method works. By following the FTA courses, he was able to work and learn together with like-minded people: „I can now study these topics with experts  and fellow students from around the world who share a desire to learn  about these matters. I also like the fact that many (though not all)  fellow students see acquiring knowledge of free technologies as a way  to help make life better for others.“ All course materials are available online but „enrolling in  a class provides an easy opportunity to form relationships with others  interested in the same topic and receive feedback and teaching from a  knowledgeable instructor“.  To interact with guest lecturers like John „Maddog“ Hall en Benjamin Mako Hill added to Peter’s positive experience with the FTA. „I feel quite fortunate to be able to engage in discussion with these experienced Free Software personalities“.

Teaching via the virtual campus was a bit of a challenge for Benjamin Mako Hill. He recorded his lecture at home, sitting behind his laptop. “Lecturing to my laptop in an empty room makes it difficult to gauge one’s audience. It makes it harder to ask questions and to tailor one’s message. I find that, as a lecturer, I tend to really feed off audience dynamics. Keeping energy high while talking to myself in an empty room is hard. Perhaps I would get used to if I did it a lot. As it stood, I thought my ability to communicate was lessened”. Benjamin did see some benefits: “I really enjoyed the ability to talk to lots of people who, due to distance and limits on travels (both theirs and mine) I would never have reached. More than 8,000 people have seen my lecture to date. I’ve never talked to a room that big. The potential of reaching more people is certainly a benefit of this model”. The virtual campus allowed for other forms of interaction: “The online back and forth is useful and leads to some very thoughtful discussion. I really enjoyed it and found it very fruitful. That said, there are benefits to the urgency that real time communication brings as well. I’m not sure which form of discussion I like more”.

Fixing bugs, promoting re-use

FTA’s first year served as a shakedown cruise to fine tune the new program. As an example, in the second round the tutor for „Economic aspects of Free Software“ became ill and a replacement couldn’t be found on such short notice. Thus the FTA decided that, in principle, each course now has a backup tutor to prevent this from happening in the future. It also appeared that some learning materials were outdated (for instance lacking attention for HTML 5) or limited in scope (as noted in the course module Open Networks).

Part of the learning materials had been developed by the UOC and translated into English for use in the FTA. Other learning materials were developed specifically for the FTA. Currently all ten books can be downloaded in PDF and ePub formats, or ordered via print-on-demand. To stimulate the collaborative development of the learning materials, all books will be made available in either DocBook or LaTex. The virtual campus will provide the tools necessary to work on the learning materials in teams.

The re-use of these Spanish materials is noteworthy. The Netherlands more often has an Anglo-Saxon orientation. The Bulgarian Varna Free University (VFU) recently joined the partner network and aims to offer the FTA-program in Bulgarian. Wouter Tebbens considers this a good example of the use of free technology: „The UOC, together with 9 Spanish Universities and the MIT, invested strongly in the campus technology which, in turn and together with already developed learning materials provided a good foundation for the FTA. Currently, the Tampere University of Technology (Finland) offers a course in open source software based on the FTA-course book „Introduction to Free Software“. The VFU wants to offer a complete masters’ program based on FTA materials, which they only need to translate into Bulgarian. ‚Free’ doesn’t mean ‚gratis’, but every investment is made only once“.

Avenues for further growth

Can the FTA gain enough traction to continue after the first year? How many students are needed to offer a sustainable programme of higher education in free technology? Wouter Tebbens is confident it is possible to achieve a sustainable programme: „You have to remember that most running costs are directly related to the number of actual students and active courses. With the virtual campus we don’t need to pay for a physical infrastructure. We estimate that with 20 to 25 courses a year, and 25 students average for each, we can continue to offer the FTA-program on a sustainable level“.

In order to achieve this kind of enrollment the FTA wants to expand its network of partners. „The FTA-model is actually quite attractive for universities. If they want to offer a course in free technology, all they have to do is use what has been developed already. If needed, students can enroll in courses offered by FTA-partners. Every institute for higher education can begin right now, without prior investment to in-house knowledge. And from there on there are many opportunities for cooperation and exchange“.

Developing a full Masters’ program is next on the list. „We are working on it“, explains Wouter. „We have a working group of universities designing the curriculum for the Masters’ program“. Recently it was decided to go forward and it is now the matter of funding that decides when the Free Technology Master’s becomes a reality.

Jon „Maddog“ Hall counsels the FTA to stay on a realistic course: „Avoid the Free Software people who are not realists.  As FOSS people we should aim for the ideal, but recognize that we are in a transition, and it takes time.  Lecturers should recognize that FOSS has warts and problems as well as great features, and be honest with the students on these.  Likewise companies are not all evil.  They do not all sit there trying to disenfranchise users.  There are real reasons why some of them to the things they do”.

Current FTA students won’t have to worry about the market value of the FTA courses, according to Benjamin Mako Hill: „There is more free software (in terms of number of applications and number of installations) than there was last year. This has been the case for basically every year for the last 25 years. So yes, it seems clear that there will be rising demand.”

Peter Rock has a clear answer to the question: “How should the FTA develop from here?”: “Continuing to add more courses as options would be great though I understand that doing so requires resources and the FTA should focus on making what they have solid, before expanding. I also think focusing on bringing in quality instructors is key. I don’t have a particular complaint, but making sure all instructors meet a minimum of expectations and are given opportunities to learn how best to run an online class can help. If students continue to have a good experience, the program as a whole has a much better chance of getting stronger and growing”. So far, the FTA lived up to his expectations.

Harry Thijssen wouldn’t mind a stronger international presence in the FTA: “I believe the discussions in the virtual class will benefit if there is a wider geographical participation. At this moment most students come from the Netherlands, the Flemish part of Belgium and Germany”. He sees a need for stronger PR, but, as he states: “this goes for the entire free software ecosystem”. A higher enrollment will benefit the quality of the education, he believes: “The tutors now work part time for the FTA and have to share their time with other responsibilities. If the number of students increases, so does the amount of time they can spend on the FTA”.

The Free Technology Academy contributes, in his opinion, to a higher quality in the use and promotion of free technology. “The FTA enhances your knowledge in free software and provides a better image of what it involves. With these university-level certificates you can add weight to your arguments”.

Finally, determining the added value of the Free Technology Academy

There are various ways to describe the added value the Free Technology Academy provides. In terms of value for the development of free technology, for governments and industry and for the students and their value on the labor market. Peter Rock points to a value that most free software activists will subscribe to: „I am taking the courses because I care about Free Software and find these studies personally enriching. Perhaps these classes will lead to something in the future but my plan is to continue teaching. I do however, bring some knowledge from these courses into my teaching. As I said, I teach IT classes using Free Software (like GNU/Linux) so my courses only help make my instruction better.” And this will be of benefit to a lot of new students.

About the author

Jan Stedehouder writes about open source, open standards, open content and everything else free and open. He wrote multiple books on Linux and open source and contributed articles about Linux and *BSD to various media. As an open source activist he is passionate about achieving sustainable, independent and secure access to one’s own digital information.

Related articles

• FSF announces publication of two new books by Richard Stallman (fsf.org)
• The Threat to Software Freedom (blogs.sitepoint.com)

But, as time progresses there is that blogging virus again. Ruminations will continue as a weblog, still focused on FOSS and related stuff, safe and sound (I hope) in the WordPress fold.

So, for now, I decided to move Ruminations on the Digital Realm to WordPress.com. At least the content is more secure now and available for the visitors of the site. It isn’t a one on one copy yet. The images haven’t been added yet.

Tineke pulled some more strings, mediated for sponsorship and thus I travelled to Brussels to live blog the event. And meet her for the first time. Our paths have crossed a few times since, though perhaps not often enough. Tineke is senior researcher Standardization at the Technical University of Delft and president of the European Academy for Standardization since 2005 (and re-elected twice since). Well, if you are in the field of standardization it’s hard to miss her.

She got me enthused about open standards, thereby broadening my outlook on the open realm. Open standards are important to ensure true freedom of choice with regards to software, to prevent vendor lock-in, to ensure ownership of your own data. And thus, the field of (open) standards is one with major political, social and economical interests, one that deserves close scrutiny. This goes way beyond the ODF versus OOXML debate, though it helped a lot of people in the open source world to understand the importance of open standards and interoperability. Tineke is worried about two co-existing open standards that also need to co-operate. In november 2008 see wrote an open letter to the IT industry and promoted the development of a independent and neutral testing center, to remove these open standards from corporate politics and community evangelism. Together with Aad Koppenol she wrote the article ‘The standards war between ODF and OOXML: Or, does competition between overlapping ISO standards lead to innovation?’ published in the Dutch Open Source Yearbook and in the International Journal of IT Standards & Standardization Research.

Tineke also spearheaded the development of a simulation game, aimed at non-technical participants in standards-setting procedures, in 2009. I was honored to be among the early testers for that game.

When you meet her, it’s only a matter of time before you are ‘into standards’ as well. As Ada Lovelace Day is a day to honor the women who contribute to science and technology and who inspire us all, I feel that Tineke deserves to have a special spot on this day. What she does impacts our lives every day, though few will be aware of it. Tineke Egyedi is one of my sources of inspiration.

When I use that definition and look around in the realms of computer users, even a large proportion of so-called advanced users fall short, thus leading to the conclusion that the majority of computer users are in fact digital illiterates.

The last couple of weeks I have been reading up on the thoughts and ideas of Prof. Robert Chambers. research associate at the Institute of Development Studies. No, his work has no direct bearing on FOSS developement or research. His main focus is that of rural development and how to involve local people, their knowledge and skills in projects in developing countries. His ‘Revolutions in Development Inquiry‘ provides a -in my opinion- brilliant overview of the participatory methodology he pioneered and should be required reading for those developing free and open source communities. In a recent talk I applied his conceptual model to FOSS communities and it allowed to see some inherent weaknesses that could hinder the adoption of free and open source software (by a priori locking out potential new users) and stiffle new contributions to projects. One example of this is highlighted by GeekFeminism, where -again unfortunately- it is pointed out that current FOSS community culture is hostile to female developers.

I will elaborate more about the conceptual model of Robert Chambers and the various conclusions it leads to. For one, it helped me to visualize the issues involving the reduction of digital illilteracy. As more and more information, knowledge, commercial and governmental services are offered via online portals it becomes paramount to make sure digital citizens do not only have access those services (a massive undertaking in it’s own right), but can make use of those services in a responsible and secure way. FOSS communities, regardless of their shortcomings, can play an important role in attacking digital literacy. But how? I tried to capture it in a set of drawings.

First, the ‘good old days’ where you could refer the n00bs to man pages and tersely written howto’s. The n00b either was a geek, or was smart enough to want to become one. Who needed a GUI in those days anyway?

And then new Linux distributions appeared that did a lot to lower the threshold to adoption. New communities arose, with new channels of communications and support.

Now, it may come as a surprise, but for a digitally less-savvy user finding you way around the average end-user facing forum is daunting. Really, it is. Wiki’s are great, but try to navigate one without any previous knowledge and it isn’t a source of help anymore. Getting there via Google runs the risk of falling in the FOSS timewarp: landing on obsolete pages for old releases.

What is the proper solutions? It certainly isn’t the way most Windows-users use.

Fixing the problem without explaining the how and why doesn’t empower, it only increases dependency.

The iSolution (hide all complexity) doesn’t help much either.

In my opinion the best way is to help users getting a better grasp of the problems, possible solutions and help them implement the solution themselves.

Perhaps you’re thinking: ‘hey, I am doing this already’. But are you sure? Well, that’s something for the next article.

It means going back to WordPress as well. The functionalities Joomla have to offer are better for what I wish to accomplish, but I do miss the notification that new versions for the plugins are available. I will have to be creative with WordPress and slowly build the site into what I want it to be.

So, if you came here via Google of via a hyperlink looking for older articles I apologize for now. They will be restored sooner or later.

First, a bit of a reconstruction

Bruce Byfield wrote his article “Richard Stallman, Leadership, and Sexism” almost apologetically. He noticed that while blogs were accusing Stallman of sexism, the regular free software press remained quiet about it. Bruce found he had some difficulties reconstructing what RMS actually had said on the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, but at least some in the audience took offense about Stallman’s remarks and found them to be sexist. Fortunately Matthew Garrett published a transcription of the presentation in question. The words that were regarded as sexist were part of Stallman’s Saint Ignucius routine:

And we also have the cult of the virgin of emacs. The virgin of emacs is any female who has not yet learned how to use emacs. And in the church of emacs we believe that taking her emacs virginity away is a blessed act.

Garrett drew a twofold conclusion. Is Stallman a sexist? Not really, but for someone with a proclaimed positive attitude towards women he showed a definite lack of introspection:

One of the frequent counterarguments against this being sexist is that RMS has often spoken out against sexism (see here, for example). It’s very easy to claim to be free of sexism. It’s much harder to perform the degree of introspection required to understand whether any of your actions are motivated by viewing genders differently. Do I believe that Richard is attempting to deliberately denigrate women? Not in the slightest. But I also don’t believe that someone entirely gender-blind would have made the above joke.

Stallman was tapped on the shoulder by David Schlesinger who first send him an e-mail and later published the response. The gist of Stallman’s position: ‘hey, it’s only meant as a joke’. Byfield also points to an earlier incident, this time in the presentation “Perform like a pr0n star” bu Matt Aimonetti at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference in April 2009. Matt did apologize for that presentation, though the following phrase is worth repeating here (emphasis mine):

Now that I have explained my view point as clearly as I can, I would also like to express my sincere regret that this situation has brought bad publicity to Rails and the loss of one of the Activism team members. I understand how people who are concerned about gender equality could have taken my presentation badly and misjudge my intentions, if they did not know me.

Kirrily Robert wrote an article about this way of apologizing and gave some pointed suggestions on how much better Matt could have handled this.

Byfield did an encore on September 9, 2009 in an article called “Sexism: Open Source Software’s Dirty Little Secret“. The direct lead for this article was the announcement of the Free Software Foundation sponsored mini-summit on Women in Free Software. This time Byfield brought some facts into the discussion:

• in the proprietary software world 28% of those involved are women, in the free software world it is 1.5% (don’t miss the dot);
• in Drupal and KDE 12% of contributors are female;
• women hardly have positions on the boards of prominent FOSS projects. No women on the Free Software Foundation board, no women on the Linux Foundation’s board. GNOME and KDE each have one woman on the board.

Katherine Noyes picked up on the Byfield article and wrote the piece “Is sexism rampant in FOSS?“. She collected quotes from various discussions on this topic, from the highly emotional responses to the more eloquent ones. In one of them the 2005 study by Yuwei Lin appears, entitled “Inclusion, diversity and gender equality: Gender Dimensions of the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development” (PDF). As main points from this study were mentioned:

• “Strong long-hour coding culture
• A lack of ‘mentors’ and role models
• Discriminatory language online and/or offline (e.g. phrases in documentaries)
• A gendered text-based environment
• Lack of a women-centered view in FLOSS development
• A male-dominated competitive worldview
• No sympathy from women peers

Overall, the conclusion was that the FOSS world was too much a guy’s world where sexist remarks, foul language and sarcastic humor is part of -what one commenter described as- the ‘locker room’ culture.

The Mark Shuttleworth faux pas came to the fore in an open letter to him, written by Kirrily Robert. Robert takes offense at Shuttleworth’s remark that Linux is ‘hard to explain to girls‘. Kirrily knows what she is talking about, having initiated the Geek Feminism Blog and presenting a well-received part on OSCON about the topic earlier this year. Her main point? If Mark had kept up with events in 2009 he would have thought twice about a remark like that:

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.

The owner of Tuxmachines, also a woman, wrote the article “Boycott Ubuntu“. Her position against Ubuntu is partly based on the distribution itself, but the derogative remark by Shuttleworth triggered a for more interesting response. She was fed up with adapting to the masculine culture in FOSS, setting it aside as ‘boys will be boys’.

This attitude stayed with me throughout my life. So, when women were being insulted and treated like sex objects in FOSS, I accepted that’s just the way men are. They’ve always been that way and they always would.

But when someone of such prominence insults the intelligence of women, I think things have gone too far. Sure, I don’t like what he said, but I still defend his right to say it. But if he wants to act like a misogynist perhaps it’s time to enact a action I’ve always wanted to do here at tuxmachines.

Sam Varghese already shot some bullets back at the open letter, realizing that he isn’t considered the geek feminists best friend.

I’m sure I’ll be shouted down too – but it doesn’t bother me one whit simply because this whole argument is never rational, it’s overly emotional.

In defense he refers to an article he wrote on sexism in the Debian project. Roy Schestowitz, who has been attacking Ubuntu on the Mono issue for some time, doesn’t feel the call to boycott Ubuntu is justified:

In my humble assessment, the biggest problem Free software might be facing is software patents; womanisers, resistance to feminism and misogynists are true issues, but they exist in many aspects of computing; they are not exclusive to Free software or specific to particular distributions of software and there is nothing about “closed” or “open” in the software sense which implies openness or closeness when it comes to other religions, sexes, races, and nationalities.

Would I dare to transliterate this (and why shouldn’t I), it would be like: “Sorry girls, it happens, don’t fret about it, there are more important issues at stake”.

Is there an issue with sexism in FOSS?

The answer to this question should be ‘yes, there is an issue’, though disagreement might arise where the issue comes from. When going through the various articles that appeared in recent months and seeing the comments on those articles, the picture isn’t that good. The overall impression (and I am talking about a broad perspective here) is that two main responses dominate. One, the “there isn’t an issue with sexism, it’s only some isolated cases but nothing structural”- argument. And second, the “it’s an issue because the women make it an issue”-argument. This one is accompanied by the “We’re sorry they are so touchy about the subject, we’ll promise to do better”- response.

One proponent of the latter argument is Hans Bezemer. He took position on the issue in two articles, “Feminism’s dirty little secret” and “Succesful women in FOSS and IT“.

Well, for the record: I’m not an anti-feminist. I consider myself to be a FOSS proponent and there is only one thing that counts to me: great code. I don’t care whether you are black or white, atheist or Christian, male or female. I don’t check the “About” boxes before I give my judgment. Great code is just great code. It’s what FOSS is all about: meritocracy. Because I’m convinced that is the real driving force of FOSS, not “sexism” as some are trying to make us believe.

In his second article he quotes women who disagree with the focus on the position of women in FOSS. Hans takes a shot at Carla Schroder, managing editor of Linux Today, who -he claims- is putting sexism in FOSS on the agenda without allowing for differing opinions. That’s quite an accusation.

But, Carla does describe a FOSS world that isn’t fun to be in:

Where to start…for me FOSS has been the best and the worst. Great people and great opportunities; and some of the worst twits ever. Being told I write great howtos for a girl, and that girls are naturally better at writing..not being able to get any Linux sys/network admin jobs when I know I’m way more qualified than the rude young white male twits that get hired…getting hit on, my body as a topic of conversation like I’m not even there, seeing rage flash in a man’s eyes when I stand up to him, and that rage is not there for men…being ignored and dismissed and having to push a hundred times as hard to get recognition…for a time I used a man’s name online because I was so tired of the garbage, and what a difference. Suddenly there was respect. If Linux and FOSS were not so cool and rewarding, if I were not so stubborn, I would have moved on to something else long ago. Because nobody should be expected to endure so much crap under any circumstances.

Is it unique for the FOSS world? Hardly, but does that make it acceptable? Schroder points to a more fundamental issue when see looks at the line-up for LinuxCon. The presenters make for a nice diversity of men.

I’m guessing some of my friends at the Foundation and at Linuxcon might be a bit upset with what I’m saying. They work hard and put a lot of themselves into the Foundation and Linux. That makes us even because I’m upset with them, because in this here year of 2009, well into the new millennium, it’s ridiculous to be this tone-deaf towards women in Linux and FOSS.

The next wave of feminism

One thing is sure, women in FOSS are making themselves heard all across the board, making use of opportunities to press forward the issue of sexism in FOSS. Kirrily Robert, she was mentioned a few times already, used her time on the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) for the Standing Out in the Crowd presentation. Her presentation can be seen online. She is also responsible for the Geek Feminism Blog and the Geek Feminism Wiki. Her presentation at OSCON was well-received, I’ll mention a few main points:

• in most technical communities women are in a minority, anywhere between 10% to 30%, 20% on average. In open source communities women are an even smaller minority, 1.5% on average (with Perl attracting 5% of women, Drupal achieving 10%).
• 80% of women had noticed sexism in the open source community, 80% of men never noticed anything.
• projects with an express diversity statement attracted a wider diversity of developers.

Robert isn’t simply banging a drum but provides quite simple guidelines to promote diversity, and thus a more women-friendly environment, in FOSS communities:

• Recruit diversity, not programming skills (“You can teach programming; you can’t teach passion of diversity”);
• Say it, mean it, either through a code of conduct or diversity statement (and stick to it);
• Set up tools that provide information to the newer team members;
• Transparency.

For each individual she has the following tips:

• Don’t stare (i.e. women are normal human beings too);
• Value all contributions;
• Call people on their crap (“How do you tell if someone’s being an asshole? Well, if there’s a naked woman the project screen, that’s a good sign.);
• Pay attention, to your own behavior and the behavior of others. Especially since 80% of the men aren’t even aware of the sexism in their communities.

Women in Free Software summit

Another key event that shaped the agenda of feminism in FOSS was the Women in Free Software summit of September 19. The summit was the initiative of three women: Deborah Nicholson (FSF), Stormy Peters (GNOME Foundation) and Hilary Rettig. As an aside, Sam Varghese -who probably wasn’t invited for the summit- cautioned us not to expect to much from the summit:

I’m not sure whether making this issue exclusively about gender will do much good. We might then end up with women joining FOSS projects in droves – only to be promptly pissed off by male developers who ask them about things like dress sense.

Anyway, we can find the minutes of the summit online, which gives everyone ample opportunity to draw his/her own conclusions. The opening statement is clear enough, it’s a simple battle cry to end sexism, period!

Our objective is to increase women’s participation in the free software movement and work to make sexism in person or online unacceptable within our community. Women represent less than 2% of the free software movement, yet our participation is a pre-requisite for the movements success. Having more women in our community advocating freedom will enrich our movement.

Then we find a straightforward SWOT analysis and list of short-term and long-term goals. There is already a mailinglist on women in free software. And yes, men can subscribe too. The quote on the mailing list is telling:

“Why aren’t more women involved in the movement to maintain and secure freedom for all computer users?” There is nothing particularly male about either computers or freedom — and yet women account for fewer than 2% of our community.

One of the short-term goals is a larger summit in the spring of 2010 where free software and the role women should play in it is put in the context of a social justice movement. There is to be a list of women willing to give presentations on the subject. The group also wants to launch various initiatives to promote the use of free software among girls and coach them to become developers. What I personally like is one of the long-term goals, namely to look into the under-representation of other groups in the FOSS world based on race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Stormy Peters wrote an article following the summit which basically dealt with the “We’re sorry they are so touchy about the subject, we’ll promise to do better”- response (mentioned above).:

When talking about women in free software or political correctness in general, we seem to focus on saying things that “don’t offend” the minority group. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying things that encourage people to join your group, that send the right message and represent our values. While not saying things that send them away. The focus should be on making the message welcoming, not on making the message “not offending.”

Peters is simply encouraging us men to think before we say or do something we consider funny:

Showing a woman in a bikini in your ad may not offend any women, but will it encourage them to join your project? If you are looking to bring women to your project, not showing the woman in a bikini is the first step. The next step – and the much harder one – is figuring out what to do to show them they are welcome.

Is this a radical movement?

The free and open source movement, especially the free software movement, always prided itself in being more than about novel technology. FOSS has a strong moral and ideological component that attracts developers, artists, scholars, writers and such, but -as is evident- not women. The extreme under-representation of women in FOSS should make us concerned and spur each one of us to action.

When I look at the women who carry the banner and who want to create a more women-friendly environment in FOSS, I don’t see a group of radical feminists. They raise an issue that needs raising. Kirrily Robert’s presentation throws out the ‘society is unfair’ argument, since it exposes the fact that where women find their way in technology, they hardly find it in free and open source software. The opening statement of the September 19 summit isn’t something radically new, it’s something we have come to accept as normal in the world outside of FOSS and is incorporated in key articles in constitutions all over the world.

The suggestions made to improve the situation in projects are not earth-shaking, they simply point to skills that we need in society anyway. True, the FOSS developers’ communities may have been masculine, aggressive and meritocratic (i.e. I can code better than you) in nature for most of their existence. But we also know that the behavior shown in the on and off flame wars is totally unacceptable in any other kind of environment, short of your average cage fight.

What is disturbing is the attitude of some male proponents in this debate, as shown in the two main arguments used. Both Varghese and Bezemer, for instance, feel it is necessary to point out they have nothing against women or feminism in particular, before continuing with the ‘there is nothing wrong’ argument. It reeks too much as a ‘I have the utmost respect for women. Go grab me a beer’ attitude. If one thing should radically change it is this downplaying of a serious issue. Strange enough, while the FOSS world is developing technology for the 21st century, based upon a moral philosophy focused on freedom, the dominant male attitude has more in common with the 19th century.

No doubt the debate will rage on for some time. No doubt there will be highly visible mistakes by the prominent alpha males of the FOSS community. And no doubt the geek feminists will hammer on each one of them. As well they should. Men of the FOSS community, this is no longer only a guy’s thing, time to show proper respect in all we say and do.

Retrieved from earlier website, though the original comments were lost.

Well, I did have two or three interesting conversations with various people working at Microsoft, I even went to visit the Dutch Microsoft office at Schiphol, the Netherlands. On Twitter I follow a few Microsoft employees. To make things worse, I also have various versions of Windows installed on two computers. Windows XP en Windows 7 on my laptop, alongside PC-BSD, Mandriva 2009 and Ubuntu 9.10. And Windows Vista and Windows 7 on my desktop, next to Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10 (and a small collection Linux distibutions via virtual machines on that box). If this didn’t corrupt me enough I wouldn’t know what else could.

Why this public confession?

Truth be told, it was spawned by the ongoing Mono debate, or rather the continued personal attacks vice versa aimed at the various participants in the debate. From the outset I considered the debate about Mono and the decisions of Ubuntu en Debian to include Mono-based applications in their default releases a non-issue.It is a non-issue. If I don’t like the choices made by a distro-builder, I either remove all crap I don’t want or simply move to another distribution. This is the freedom I have and I like to keep it that way.

However, a tiny minority (of course claiming to represent multiudes of concerned but silent by-standers) took it upon themselves to raise the issue in forums and mailinglists, as well as on their internet headquarters. Not hindered by any real knowledge about the other participants in the debate they banged hammers on anvils, trying to shove their key arguments through the collective throats of Ubuntu and Debian developers. Well, “arguments”. There was and is only one argument that is repeated and repeated again and again: Mono is related to Microsoft, Microsoft is inherently evil, Mono is inherently evil. Though the style of argumentation has decent roots in Greek philosophy, the basic argument is both stale and shallow. But, following this way of thinking, I am guilty by association, hence completely unreliable.

Without proper arguments the Mono debate turned into a ‘mano a mano’ match, spurring the well-respected debater Glynn Moody to call for a ‘cease fire’, or at least to stop the ad hominem attacks. So far it didn’t work.

Advocate of free(dom)

Recently I wrote the article “Embrace and extend: a non-binary approach to open source promotion“. I don’t believe in a simple, binary outlook on life, nor on issues in the free and open source world. I don’t believe in the simple ‘Microsoft is evil’ mantra. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep a close watch at what major corporations with huge commercial interests are doing in the world of free and open source. And there are benefits to pursuing a strong debate, based on solid arguments, promoting the case for free and open source software, and open standards.

What I do mind is that a small minority seems to be on a single-minded pursuit of ideological purity for free. Anyone who doesn’t share that pursuit and raises the slightest of criticism is accused of being a Microsoft shill. Using a toolbox which would make the average conspiracy theorist proud, everything is used to prove that the critic is somehow influenced by, related to or -the worst,of course- paid by Microsoft. I guess I saved some people the time to find the evidence.

What is my problem with that single-minded pursuit of ideological purity for free? Am I not an advocate of free and open source software and open source? Yes, I like to think I am. But above all I am an advocate of freedom, in this case, the freedom to make an informed choice. We should educate computer users about the various choices that are possible, both proprietary and free/open, with the consequences. We should not impose a choice upon them, it is their freedom. If someone or some organization then decides it wants to go for a complete Microsoft controlled environment, so be it. If he/she goes for a completely free environment, that is fine with me. Each choice has it’s own pro’s and con’s. Just be knowledgeable, make an informed decision and live with the consequences.

Yet, those who fight for ideological purity want to take away that freedom of choice from me. They want to remove everything that doesn’t measure up to their standard of free. Instead of providing decent arguments they go for the jugular. And I don’t believe for a second that this tiny minority is in any way representative for the free software movement. But it did achieve to stir up a sad debate about a non-issue resulting in personal attacks on free and open source developers we should respect for their hard work over the last years or even decades.

And, to paraphrase the final paragraph from the ‘Embrace and extend’-article, pursuing a negative, almost paranoid campaign against the not-so-pure doesn’t bring new building blocks, creates no new open source software, doesn’t lead to new open standards and won’t convince users to switch to Linux. And then, who will have won?

First, some explanation. 2008 was a great year for me as a writer, columnist and journalist. I was given the opportunity to write two books on migrating to Ubuntu Linux and one one open source and open standards. I could contribute to a textbook for higher education and was co-editor of the Dutch open source yearbook 2008/2009. As editor of the online open source magazine Livre I was on top of the international open news. Regular readers know I have a thing for the BSD’s and it was an honor to be able to contribute to the new BSD Magazine. Apart from this I continued writing pieces for Digiplace and SoftwareBus, a magazine for a Dutch computerusers group. Well, I guess you can understand why I decided a brief writing sabbatical was in order.

But now, playing time is over. I used the sabbatical to refocus my writing, deciding upon the projects I wish to contribute (as most of my writing is volunteer work I have to spend my time wisely) and the topics I want to write about this year. One of those projects is Transparante Zaken, transparant affairs, which should develop itself into an independent news- and opinionsite for the open domain as well as a platform for the Dutch open communities to make themselves heard and known. This site is an initiative of myself and Brenno de Winter, the foremost ICT-journalist in the Netherlands who is currently involved in a massive Freedom of Information Act campaign in order to get a grip on the actual open source/open standards policies of various governments.

Ruminations on the Digital Realm has always been my playground in English with reviews about Linux distributions and -for instance- the two ’30 days with…’ series about PC-BSD and DesktopBSD. Another aspect has been my ideas on how to promote open source, like yesterday’s article ‘Embrace and extend‘. I believe it’s time to put some muscle behind Ruminations again and start writing those reviews and opinion pieces.

I did decide to say goodbye to this old blog. WordPress has been a great companion for the last three years, but the kind of articles I wish to write and the way I want to organize them for future reference require a different platform. In this case Joomla. The new site is ready to roll. Starting coming Monday the URL www.ruminationsonthedigitalrealm will point forward to the new Joomla-based website. This blog will remain, albeit at a different location.

For those who follow Ruminations via newsfeeds, please update the URL’s to:
http://www.ruminationsonthedigitalrealm.org/portal/rss (for the new site)
http://www.ruminationsonthedigitalrealm.org/portal/old/feed (for the old site)

Looking forward to meeting everyone at the new location.