Male Feminists

I notice in the comments on David Schlesinger's blog posts about RMS's "EMACS virgin" tangent at Guadec/Akademy a lot of folks telling him to stop being a "pseudo-feminist" or implying that he thinks women are defenseless and need a big strong man to protect us, or whatever.

We don't need knights in shining armor, but we do need allies. For example, if someone has demonstrated that they are a misogynist, do you really think they will listen to a woman when she says that was offensive? Um, no. They'll call her oversensitive and try to blame it on PMS or tell her she just doesn't belong in that group and should go back to her knitting circle. This is where the male feminists come in. Being male, they have a chance of actually being listened to. That is, if they aren't dismissed as gender traitors first. The traitors have to be discredited. And that's why one of the first things you'll see in a comment or hear is that the male feminist needs to stop treating women like delicate flowers who can't defend themselves.

And this isn't the first time I've seen these sort of comments. Oh, and Matt just sent me a link for guys wondering about how to behave in feminist discussions.

Bold Prediction: "Bug 1 will be closed in the next 24 months"

At SELF, Bethlynn Eicher made a bold prediction: Bug 1: Microsoft has a majority market share will be closed in the next 24 months. The date she named on her blog is 30 June 2011. She keeps pointing out in her blog that we're at GhandiCon 3. "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

I'm listening to Season 1 Episode 20 of the Ubuntu UK Podcast, and they had Matt Zimmerman on there. Someone asked Matt if he thought Bug 1 would be closed in the next 4 years, and he said that sounded a little ambitious.

I'm just amused by the wildly differing expectations. I am reminded of Martin Owens's blog post Ignition Advertising in Ubuntu where he points out that people like to use things that are popular. If we don't say that "like nobody uses it" they'll be more likely to try it. In computers, this makes total sense. If you need help with a little question, do you call the help desk, or do you ask the person at the next desk over "hey, how do I add a printer?" Likely the latter. Historically, Linux has kind of lost on this front. It's why we have LUGs and LoCo Teams. I think that as we get more users, the momentum to gain more users will grow because being kind of popular makes it easier to become more popular. There's a point we need to hit where it'll become really easy to get new folks interested. How quickly we reach that point determines whether Bethlynn or Matt will be right.

Two polls below. Is Bethlynn right? What's your prediction?

Will Bug 1 be closed by the end of June 2011?
	Yes
	No
pollcode.com free polls

Bug 1 will be closed within...
	1 year
	2 years
	3 years
	4 years
	5 years
	10 years
	Not in this lifetime
pollcode.com free polls

Ohio Linuxfest Call for Presentations is Open

Ohio Linuxfest is now in its 7th year, but that's nothing compared to the 40 years that UNIX has been around. The theme this year is the Past, Present, and Future of UNIX & Linux.

Doug McIlroy will be keynoting. If you haven't heard of him yet, he was Kernighan, Thomson, & Richie's boss back at AT&T Bell Labs when they were creating UNIX and C. He's credited with creating the UNIX pipe ("|") as well. Peter Salus, known for his books "A Quarter Century of UNIX" and "The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin" will be keynoting as well. And finally, Shawn Powers of Linux Journal fame will be giving a keynote on "Fixing the Economy with Linux."

As with last year, Bdale and his daughter Elizabeth Garbee are expected to speak. Jono has also agreed to speak.

But these six people can't be it. If you've got something to say, why not submit a proposal? The call for presentations is only open a few more days—it closes on the 8th. Get your proposal in!

If you're not that interested in speaking in front of a large crowd, registration is open too. There's free admission, or for $65 you can support the fest, get a T-shirt, and have lunch. There's also a professional package that includes a day of training in addition to what's in the supporter package. That one is $350. There's more to that, but the details aren't fixed yet, so I won't post them yet. There are going to be BoFs and parties of course. LPI certification level 1 testing is expected to be available again as well.

And as I've mentioned before, there is going to be a Diversity in Open Source workshop day. Proposals are being accepted for that as well. Details on the linked page.

Finally, Ohio Linuxfest is now on Identi.ca and has a group there as well. This is in addition to the Twitter account that already existed.