Hi, folks. I'd like to welcome you to the FOSS LGBT blog. You may be wondering: What is FOSS LGBT?
For quite some time now, there has been an effort to include women into the FOSS community via projects such as Debian Women, Ubuntu Women, LinuxChix, the Association for Women in Computing, and others. This is a fantastic effort, with a lot of progress being made in the past few years alone. As a result, many female techies that otherwise wouldn't be here have crawled out of the woodwork and revealed themselves.
This is fantastic, however, there is still a very small percentage of visible LGBT users in the FOSS community. This effort is to try and band together under the FOSS LGBT flag and be an active voice in the FOSS community. In short, this initiative is for LGBT people in the FOSS community, and the people that love and support them as well.
Anyways, this is all very much a work-in-progress. I'm running this on Blogger for now, but if the community grows I'll look into setting up a full web site!
Connect with Us!
Feel free to join the group on
-identi.ca!
-Fossunet!
-IRC! (#fosslgbt on irc.freenode.net)
Future plans include:
-Setting up a Mailing List (Any tips on how to do this efficiently?)
-Possibly setting up a forum.
We're always open to suggestions! :D
I think it should be fossqueer rather than focusing on specific concrete identities. but I'm all about this. see you on the irc.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point. I suppose you are correct, as "LGBT" doesn't even cover the diversity of the community itself.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, some people could take "Queer" as being derogatory. To me it's similar to the term "fag".
OMG!! I thought this was a joke that the guys were playing at work.
ReplyDeleteIve worked on FOSS projects for over a decade and unless someone happens to specifically mention their sexual preference, it is a non issue who you have sex with.
We have 3 devs out of 18 at work who are gay, their sex lives are of no interest to me and vice versa. We are professional who work for a living, do a good job and you'll do well. Dont pull your weight and well find someone else.
THOSE are the only things that matter.
I also go to conferences about 4 times per year and get to meet a lot of people that most of our devs only get to talk to online, irc, audio and email. No one has ever asked me back at work if such and such is gay (and for some reason germans speaking english do sound more gay,whatever that means...probably american TV influences) and the only time Ive found out is when someone brings his other to a supper or maybe shows us pictures of their vacations.
The reaction to these discoveries? Big yawn.
NO ONE that Ive met/worked cares.
Maybe 20 yrs ago it was a big deal but its not.
I know how hard it is for women in tech but visible gays? WTF is that?
My wife's best friend is gay and at his birthday party there were about 30 gay guys and us, the token hetero couple. There were the over the top queers who feel teh need to be flamboyant, another bunch who you could say were a bit effiminate and more than 2/3 who you couldnt tell.
The flamboyant Special K fanatics who spend half their lives at the gym and the other at clubs would stick out at work just like the guido talking about the p*ssy he is nailing would. The professionals at the party, the 3 lawyers, the 2 doctors, journalist, tv personality, 3-4 teachers, engineer, politician and stock trader wouldnt. All are open, all are proud and all have learned that people dont care about this anymore.
I understand a bit what women go through but your sexuality is NOT an exterior factor like for women.
Who you fuck should be your business and the only thing I care about you is your code.
If its good, then youre a great person. If you written spaghetti code, then you suck and your sexuality shouldnt affect me either way.
I might be missing some things that I havent grasped yet but my utter boredom at the topic is too much to bear.
Maybe Im too much of a geek but your sexuality bores me, all I care is not your body but your body of work.
It might make me a bad person to you but as a black man I have yet to find a need to have a black Linux group so Im amused that caucasians minorities feel this need (sure, the visible ones like transexuals have a definite problem but Joe Blow, the gay Perl coder? Much, much less).
And we are in a bigger minority in FLOSS I find (Im talking about american here, not the rest of the world).
I want to be judged by the strength of my character and the quality of my work. Period.
But it is free software after all, no one can stop you from doing this if you feel its right for you.
Freedom is really a great thing.
Virgil