Women in Linux
Women in Linux (or technology in general) has always been a rare breed. I have been very unsuccessful trying to make my female friends or family members getting interested in linux. So in my quest in getting more women interested in linux I have made this list of women who have actively contributed in linux community. This list doesn’t include women in just open source community (like Mitchell Baker of Mozilla Foundation) but more specifically women with notable contribution in linux community. This list is in no particular order.
Machtelt Garrels: Machtelt Garrels is a Linux veteran and freelance consultant/trainer. She is also a member of the Linux Documentation Project, where she initially found a fertile ground to make her work read throughout the world. She was invited last year to join the BSD Certification Group Advisory Board and shares her knowledge about organizing certifications, which she gathered as a Translation Coordinator for the Linux Professional Institute. In cooperation with a group of Dutch colleagues, she founded the OpenDoc Society last year, which is a non-profit organization that promotes the use of open standards and Open Document Standard (ODF) in particular. (Source)
Pia Waugh: Pia Waugh is an Australian free software advocate, currently the president of the organization that runs Software Freedom Day and a former president and vice-president of Linux Australia. (Source)
Erinn Clark: A Debian developer as well as the leader and co-founder of Debian Women. She is also a build/release engineer. (source)
Hanna Wallach: A GNOME and Debian developer who helped the GNOME foundation to get its Women’s Summer Outreach Program off the ground. (Source) (Giving a speech)
Amaya Rodrigo Sastre: A Debian developer and co-founder of Debian Women. (Her Blog)
Celeste Lyn Paul: She is an interaction designer, researcher, and open source contributor. She also leads the KDE Usability Project, is a mentor for the OpenUsability Season of Usability, and is involved in Kubuntu Linux. (Source)
Eva Brucherseifer: Eva is an electrical engineer from Germany and a driving force behind the KDE-Women and KDE-Edu projects and the KDE-Solaris mailing list. (Source)
Anne Nicolas: Engineering director at Mandriva. (Source)
Pauline Middelink: Dutch Kernel hacker. Contributions is identd, IP-Masquerading and Automount/Autofs. (Source)
Kristen Carlson Accardi: Kristen Carlson Accardi is a Linux kernel developer who works for Intel Corporation. She has been a device driver developer since the 1990s and began concentrating on Linux in 2005. She maintains the PCI hot-plug subsystem in the Linux kernel. At least as of 2007, she was the only woman who was a subsystem maintainer for Linux. She lead the organization of the 2008 Linux Plumber’s Conference. (Source)
Val Henson: Valerie “Val” Henson is a Linux kernel hacker specializing in filesystem development. As of August 2008 she will be working for Red Hat. (Source) (Website)
Stormy Peters: Stormy Peters is the executive director (manager) of the GNOME Foundation. She has been involved in the GNOME community since 1999. (Her blog)
Ofcourse there are many more who deserve to be in this list, that I am not aware. If you know anyone, feel free mention them in your comments with source if possible.
There are also some Linux Women websites and organization out there that you might be interested in:
Debian Women
Fedora Women
Gnome Women
KDE Women
Ubuntu Women
LinuxChix
And last but not least, a good guide to get women interested in Linux: HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux
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Needs pictures
The women I know in this list (only 2) have a quite negative opinion on the things linked at the end, and probably to this article. To make it short, they work on their things and don’t want to be listed as women but as someone contributing to the thing.
I think that the listed projects are often made by women who don’t feel part of the communities, while most of the ones on this list are well integrated.
I think it would be interesting to ask them all about this kind of projects.
Woman in linux is a good thing!
surely there should be some pix with this article???
What is this the 1940’s? How the f**k does this get on digg? Buried for fu***ing stupidity, just a ridiculous article. Whoever wrote this is a fruity dumb ass who needs to get his head smashed with a wooden mallet.
no pics == safe to assume women not so hot
You missed the point.. how many of them are hot? Basic statistics say that there must be a single hot Linux nerd. Lets see her.
I would also say Leslie Hawthorn from Google’s Open Source Office.
How about women in BSD (Dru Lavigne)? :)
I second for ‘Dru Lavigne.’ She’s quite knowledgable and I have her BSD Hacks book. I believe she released another book recently.
Worthless without pics!
Does not posting their picture make their contribution less important?
At first I did add picture by their name, than I took it off. If you are really desperate to see their picture, either visit the source provided or Google them up.
I hope all other women-on-linux communities are better than LinuxChix
Have you ever met a girl who thinks she’s unique and special just because she ran Linux?
Yeah, I’ve met a lot of then, in fact, they all congregate in Brazil under the name LinuxChix…
Having a bunch of desperate nerds licking your ass the whole day just because you use Linux and you actually don’t have a penis is making women who use Linux to be become dicks. That’s why we should help people to join Linux, no matter which sex.
To echo the second comment, I also know a few women that develop free software who expressly wish not to be known as “Women in Free Software” so much as equal contributors based on the merits of what they do.
Women are equally technically capable as men. Let them be recognised for their contributions, not for their gender.
Some women have told me that they were actively discouraged from technical interests as children. This is a different matter, but one that still needs to be handled without constantly pushing gender into the foreground:
Encouraging women to get involved in free software on the basis that they’re women, and that more women ’should’ be involved in free software projects simply perpetuates the segregation I think. It underscores gender as a category of contribution and has the potential to undermine their efforts to build confidence on the merits of their abilities and/or actual contributions - to feel like equals.
IMO a better strategy is to encourage all people to get involved in free software on the basis of their general enthusiasm, curiosity and intelligence (regardless of gender).
Cheers
Is there no news at all? Whats next… a list of contributors? Seriously… singling out anyone person or group is just lame…. Lets leave it to the HR department. They need something to do…
http://xkcd.com/322/
Sarah. I am a big time xkcd fan. I totally forgot about this one. Thanks! :)
i’ve seen that in my office, women are more result-oriented and get things done…
thats why they don’t make good programmers ;-) programming is about _not_ getting the job done and providing the right excuses…
I’d like to propose also Clytie Siddall, she is an australian-vietnamese woman that leads the whole localization of the biggest OpenSource programs into vietnamese, (OpenOffice, Firefox, and many more)
http://vnoss.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=projects:l10n you can see here all the projects she is taking care of.
She is a linguistic so I believe she loves the languages also, please add her in your list.
wow….soooo many lusers who can’t find a girl out there all looking for the one they can try to impress by being a linux nerd? “OMG GIVE ME A PICTURE PLS!”
go watch some porn or something…you guys are pathetic. how about recognizing their work and treating them like human beings instead of drooling over how hot you hope they are.
You forgot the most active female Debian Developers who are Marga Manterola and Ana Guerrero.
BTW http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Open-Source-Diva-Stop-Whining-Start-Doing/?kc=rss
I love how so many men can talk FOR these women. Saying that they don’t want to be known as women and only as contributors… Even giving just a single example.
Okay, allow me to counter. From that very list, Erinn Clark is a ‘co-founder and leader of Debian Women’. Gee, guess maybe she’s proud of the fact that she’s a woman and doesn’t find that pointing that out is a mark of shame.
Any minority in a group, especially if that minority is gaining ground towards the status quo, is a pioneer. It takes a little more effort, and acknowledging their effort is not a bad thing!
I honestly don’t find onerous the fact of giving a recognition to some of the women involved in FOSS. Au contraire, is my hope that this can entusiast other girls that may be interested in testing Linux in their homes, but feel that it is “not what a chick should be doing”. It is lame that mostly men enjoy messing with technology; our lives could be more enlightened with more women to get nerdy with. At least i would enjoy that kind of company incredibly. Viva la Mango Parfait!
Very glad 2 see alot of women in OSS projects. Pretty sad that none from India AFAIK. Hats off 2 these womens in the projects..
now all we have to do is get HOT women to use linux.
If you like XKCD this is actually more appropriate to the situation…
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=338
Aha.. So we have women in Linux development. May I ask what is the big deal ? They are in many fields that are far more worthy of mentioning than Linux.
To me, open source, especially free one is actually the most overrated thing. Today you add things in Linux, tomorrow RedHat takes that code and on the basis of it builds something not so useful and sell it to the market.
You code for MySQL and tomorrow SUN purchases it, distributes it free and start earning on support (much of this support knowledge is gained from the web communities)
Yes Erinn Clark is obviously extremely intelligent & just as obviously has the most beautiful big ass on earth!!