ashe dryden

Over the past year I've been invited to speak at two events¹ that really resonated with me. In these spaces we could move beyond diversity 101 topics and start to dig into the root of the issues marginalized people face in tech. We could critically analyze the culture around us in a space made for us.

On a terrifyingly regular basis, incidents of bad behavior surface in the open source community. This can range from dismissiveness toward someone in a marginalized group, to outright hostility at conferences, to harassment and intimidation in the workplace, to physical violence and sexual assault in our community spaces. The scary thing here is that we only hear about them when they either happen in public or when the affected person comes forward, not all of them knowing what will happen when they do. 

Disclaimer: This post is critical of open source software in the context of unpaid labor and the hiring requirements we've set up around it. It is not a criticism of open source software itself or the people who participate in it, both of which I and anyone who uses software benefits from. This is work that I - and many of us who do software for a living - also financially benefit from.