[TOS] how broad a mandate?

[Dru Lavigne]

> It's pretty clear that materials for teaching open source have to talk 
> about licensing, which I believe necessitates discussion of the wider 
> social context of copyright vs. file sharing, software patents, free 
> speech, etc.  Discussions of open source "in the large" also often touch 
> on the needs of developing countries.  Given all of that, should we also 
> cover equity issues, such as why gender ratios in open source are much 
> worse than they are in the industry as a whole (where they are in turn 
> worse than in most white collar sectors)?  Incidents such as Mike 
> Gunderloy's resignation from the Rails Activists group [1] over the 
> responses to Sarah Allen's complaints about GoGaRuCo [2] mean that 
> students are going to encounter the question; should we be trying to give 
> them context?


As a woman in open source, I see the gender issue as part of the larger issue of community culture. One of the points I always stress when talking about community is that every community is different in culture, tone, what is allowed/not allowed and that the community founder tends to attract others who share their cultural view. In other words, when choosing community, one needs to look at more than which ones meet their technical skillset and be prepared to "shop around" for the best fit. IMHO, these are all good lessons which should be taught rather than learned the hard way.

Cheers,

Dru
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