When your contributor list is like 98% white males, creating a program to encourage diversity in your contributor base is not 'gender exclusionary' or discriminatory: it's promoting diversity. They're not driving any white males out and they're not forcing anybody to quit, they're just expanding the contributor pool. This is a good thing. If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now.
The fact that the budget FAQ largely describes invoicing failures during the operation of an internship program makes it confusing that you spend your whole post railing against an entirely imaginary evil plot where the GNOME Foundation's money is drained away by a supposedly exclusionary program that recruits and pays qualified interns.
If you feel so unfairly discriminated against, maybe you should prove your inherent superiority by outperforming all these supposedly unqualified interns as a programmer and contributor.
GSoC outreach alone would not necessarily address defects in the administration of GSoC. It is possible Google's administration of that program has systemic issues that result in the exclusion of qualified women (and men, for that matter!) Having multiple groups running internship programs and sponsorships is good because it means they can compete to find the best way to run things.
Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! Focusing your efforts on the people that benefit the most is not 'exclusionary', especially if you are attempting to include people who are already excluded.
The Gnome Foundation exists for a very specific reason, documented by their charter.
It was not remotely within the purview of the Gnome Foundation's charter to administer the OPW program for external organizations, and it's is unclear whether the Gnome subset of the OPW program itself was within their charter to begin with.
This is especially true given their apparent prioritization of OPW payments over all other foundation obligations to the extent that they actually spent down their cash reserves to near zero.
If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now.
If the board had so severely damaged their ability to fulfill their chartered objectives through any other out-of-charter overreach, nothing would be different here.
Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program!
How are you so certain that I, and other individuals, don't need any help from the program purely on the basis of my gender? A number of very bright ("white", male, not that it should matter) South American developers have a lot of trouble participating in open source due to travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and budgetary and technology access limitations. This has very much limited their career and personal growth, is something that warrants active intervention, and is still outside the purview of the Gnome Foundation.
There is an almost infinite axis of diversity, none of which are within the purview of the foundation's charter. The mission statement is quite clear.
You just described why the OPW has no reason to invest money in helping you out. You don't fit the criteria.
Requiring a single program to reach out to every single individual in need of any sort of assistance is utterly absurd because it accomplishes nothing. You pick groups that need assistance (SPECIFIC groups) and figure out ways to best serve their needs. Picking groups makes it possible to identify approaches to solving problems because you can group people up that have common problems.
Travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and access limitations are all thoroughly distinct problems that require different solutions. Why the hell should an internship program for women have anything to do with that? Furthermore, why do you think women aren't affected by those problems?
You're still claiming that it is gender-exclusionary when all your attempts to argue this merely demonstrate that you don't understand the concept of exclusion or the concept of charitable intervention whatsoever. I don't blame you for not being informed, but you should really make an effort to understand what actually goes on in running an organization like OPW.
Since you used the axis terminology, let me try to communicate this to you in similar terms: If you try to group up everyone who is disadvantaged, you end up with a bunch of points distributed randomly across a huge number of axes - many dozens of them, effectively filling an enormous possibility space. You can't address anything efficiently because every single person becomes a unique case, and you're unable to make any generalizations or come up with strategies that affect more than one person. It's quite obvious that this is inefficient (if not entirely ineffective). If you focus specifically on the 'most common' problems in a group that is largely male, you will end up focusing on male-specific problems and exclude women.
Individual outreach custom-tailored for individual problems is best done by individuals. Go get out there and help the individuals you know about that need help, or figure out a common problem they have and start a group to solve it. Maybe the GNOME foundation will fund it if you do a good job.
I don't know how to explain this to you more clearly than I already have. Selecting a subset of the population to help is not some evil form of 'discrimination', it's the only reasonable option. A charitable organization that follows your absurd standards literally cannot exist.
EDIT: To be illustrative, here are some examples of actual destructive discrimination that exist, unlike the OPW 'discrimination' you're upset about:
Predominantly white male politicians in (mostly southern) US states revising voting regulations in ways that conveniently exclude minorities from being able to vote while conveniently not making it much harder for their white male voter base
Uneven enforcement of laws and sentencing guidelines for people of color and other minorities versus the prosecution and sentences handed out to white males
Practices like 'stop and frisk' where law enforcement explicitly targets people based on their appearance and treats them as criminals regardless of whether there are any actual indications that they were involved in a crime
Those are examples of real discrimination, and much of it affects men, not just women. That's the kind of discrimination you should be upset about, not that the OPW happens to be using money in a way you disagree with. Get out there and fix the world.
Sorry but your own arguments undermine the very points you're trying to make. Yes, charities do need to decide who they want to help in order to succeed, but this supports teacup50's argument that Gnome should've stuck to their own stated aims and scope. Likewise, your examples of "actual destructive discrimination" are aimed in large part at the same group teacup50 was complaining these outreach programs don't help - you're basically arguing that it's OK they're not included in outreach programs because worse things happen to them, but then why have one for women either?
Comments
When your contributor list is like 98% white males, creating a program to encourage diversity in your contributor base is not 'gender exclusionary' or discriminatory: it's promoting diversity. They're not driving any white males out and they're not forcing anybody to quit, they're just expanding the contributor pool. This is a good thing. If the contributor base was 98% female and you were getting a paid internship, you would not be bitching in a HN post right now.
The fact that the budget FAQ largely describes invoicing failures during the operation of an internship program makes it confusing that you spend your whole post railing against an entirely imaginary evil plot where the GNOME Foundation's money is drained away by a supposedly exclusionary program that recruits and pays qualified interns.
If you feel so unfairly discriminated against, maybe you should prove your inherent superiority by outperforming all these supposedly unqualified interns as a programmer and contributor.
GSoC outreach alone would not necessarily address defects in the administration of GSoC. It is possible Google's administration of that program has systemic issues that result in the exclusion of qualified women (and men, for that matter!) Having multiple groups running internship programs and sponsorships is good because it means they can compete to find the best way to run things.
Your closing statement demonstrates your flawed thinking: Of course a push for inclusion is biased, because it focuses on the people that are excluded in order to include them. The program doesn't care about you because you don't need any help from the program! Focusing your efforts on the people that benefit the most is not 'exclusionary', especially if you are attempting to include people who are already excluded.
The Gnome Foundation exists for a very specific reason, documented by their charter.
It was not remotely within the purview of the Gnome Foundation's charter to administer the OPW program for external organizations, and it's is unclear whether the Gnome subset of the OPW program itself was within their charter to begin with.
This is especially true given their apparent prioritization of OPW payments over all other foundation obligations to the extent that they actually spent down their cash reserves to near zero.
If the board had so severely damaged their ability to fulfill their chartered objectives through any other out-of-charter overreach, nothing would be different here.
How are you so certain that I, and other individuals, don't need any help from the program purely on the basis of my gender? A number of very bright ("white", male, not that it should matter) South American developers have a lot of trouble participating in open source due to travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and budgetary and technology access limitations. This has very much limited their career and personal growth, is something that warrants active intervention, and is still outside the purview of the Gnome Foundation.
There is an almost infinite axis of diversity, none of which are within the purview of the foundation's charter. The mission statement is quite clear.
You just described why the OPW has no reason to invest money in helping you out. You don't fit the criteria.
Requiring a single program to reach out to every single individual in need of any sort of assistance is utterly absurd because it accomplishes nothing. You pick groups that need assistance (SPECIFIC groups) and figure out ways to best serve their needs. Picking groups makes it possible to identify approaches to solving problems because you can group people up that have common problems.
Travel laws, visa difficulty, language barriers, and access limitations are all thoroughly distinct problems that require different solutions. Why the hell should an internship program for women have anything to do with that? Furthermore, why do you think women aren't affected by those problems?
You're still claiming that it is gender-exclusionary when all your attempts to argue this merely demonstrate that you don't understand the concept of exclusion or the concept of charitable intervention whatsoever. I don't blame you for not being informed, but you should really make an effort to understand what actually goes on in running an organization like OPW.
Since you used the axis terminology, let me try to communicate this to you in similar terms: If you try to group up everyone who is disadvantaged, you end up with a bunch of points distributed randomly across a huge number of axes - many dozens of them, effectively filling an enormous possibility space. You can't address anything efficiently because every single person becomes a unique case, and you're unable to make any generalizations or come up with strategies that affect more than one person. It's quite obvious that this is inefficient (if not entirely ineffective). If you focus specifically on the 'most common' problems in a group that is largely male, you will end up focusing on male-specific problems and exclude women.
Individual outreach custom-tailored for individual problems is best done by individuals. Go get out there and help the individuals you know about that need help, or figure out a common problem they have and start a group to solve it. Maybe the GNOME foundation will fund it if you do a good job.
Yes, that's the problem with discrimination.
I don't know how to explain this to you more clearly than I already have. Selecting a subset of the population to help is not some evil form of 'discrimination', it's the only reasonable option. A charitable organization that follows your absurd standards literally cannot exist.
EDIT: To be illustrative, here are some examples of actual destructive discrimination that exist, unlike the OPW 'discrimination' you're upset about:
Predominantly white male politicians in (mostly southern) US states revising voting regulations in ways that conveniently exclude minorities from being able to vote while conveniently not making it much harder for their white male voter base
Uneven enforcement of laws and sentencing guidelines for people of color and other minorities versus the prosecution and sentences handed out to white males
Practices like 'stop and frisk' where law enforcement explicitly targets people based on their appearance and treats them as criminals regardless of whether there are any actual indications that they were involved in a crime
Those are examples of real discrimination, and much of it affects men, not just women. That's the kind of discrimination you should be upset about, not that the OPW happens to be using money in a way you disagree with. Get out there and fix the world.
Sorry but your own arguments undermine the very points you're trying to make. Yes, charities do need to decide who they want to help in order to succeed, but this supports teacup50's argument that Gnome should've stuck to their own stated aims and scope. Likewise, your examples of "actual destructive discrimination" are aimed in large part at the same group teacup50 was complaining these outreach programs don't help - you're basically arguing that it's OK they're not included in outreach programs because worse things happen to them, but then why have one for women either?