Structurelessness, feminism and open: what open advocates can learn from second wave feminists

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009, Karsten Wade wrote:

> One thing we don't do too much of on this list is discuss how power is
> controlled and wielded in the Fedora Project.  As I've been doing a
> lot of thinking and reading lately about feminism and technology, this
> David Eaves post was a nice fit in to that.
>
> http://eaves.ca/2009/07/06/structurelessness-feminism-and-open
>
> It's a good meditation with good calls to action on how an open
> project can ensure it's _ability_ to grow contributor base.  Amongst
> other stuff.  Great read for anyone currently in this project,
> especially if you care about how it is going to look and act in the
> future.

>From TFA:

"I've personally experienced the struggle of trying to engage/penetrate an 
open source community. Who I should talk to, how to present my ideas, 
where to present them -- all often have rules (of which, within Mozilla, I 
was usually informed by friends on the inside -- while occasionally I 
discovered the rules awkwardly, after grossly violating them). Most open 
source communities I know of -- such as Mozilla or Canada25 --  never 
claimed (thankfully) to be democratic, but there is an important lesson 
here. Recognizing the dangers of too much (or rather the wrong) structure 
is important. But that should not blind us to the other risk -- the danger 
outlined above by Freeman for feminists in 1970: that in our zeal to avoid 
bad structure, we open advocates begin to pretend that there is no 
structure, or no need for structure."

I think we fight hard not to fall into this trap.  We don't strive to be a 
democracy; we strive (certainly imperfectly) to be a meritocracy.  He/she 
who solves problems, gets more problems to solve.  Ideally.  :)

--g

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