[TOS] Why do you care about TOS?

Mel Chua mel at redhat.com
Wed Apr 14 07:44:04 UTC 2010


I saw this today and was reminded of why it's important to do what we're 
doing - or at least what motivates me to work on it.

http://geekfeminism.org/2010/04/09/is-requiring-open-source-experience-sexist/#comments

The comments on this post are long, but worth reading. For me, this is 
one of the big reasons I'd love to see FOSS contribution taught in 
schools, as an attractive option for fulfilling one's academic 
requirements, as opposed to only being available "in one's free time," 
which for students with family, financial, etc. constraints may not exist.

I sometimes tell people I wouldn't have gotten into open source if I 
hadn't left home for high school (I attended the residential public 
magnet high school school for my state). The long stretches of 
uninterrupted time I had in my dorm room to be exposed to people who 
were into Linux (and supportive of me playing with the same), become 
fascinated with code, tinker with Debian, etc. were only present when I 
was living at school - during summers and vacations, my learning crawled 
to a standstill as I was interrupted to wash dishes, watch kids, chided 
for spending too much time on the computer talking to people my family 
didn't know instead of being on-call to help out around the house, and 
so forth. If I hadn't been able to "catch the bug" while I was in 
school, I wouldn't have the energy to fight to preserve my ability to 
learn about and contribute to these things later on in life (like now).

For some people, school is the best place to get prolonged, consistent 
exposure to opportunities for FOSS contribution, which can lead directly 
to more opportunities down the line. (It worked for me!) One of the 
results of what we're doing at TOS is opening up these opportunities to 
those who may currently not be able (or easily able) to pay the 
invisible "privilege tax" required to gain access. There are many more 
good things that come from teaching open source - but this is one that 
I've found often overlooked, and the primary reason I continue to 
contribute in this space.

</soapbox>

Why are *you* here?

--Mel



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